Reset
by sspidersinthebathtub
Summary: "Take a swan dive off the school roof" "I already have"
1. 1- Death Is Only The Beginning

'Reset'

Was the words that seemed to float in mid air in front of Izuku Midoriya

'What the hell'

Was the first thought that stuck in Izuku's head, he was utterly dumbfounded at the situation presented to him. There was no infinitely black, no light at the end of the tunnel not even a hospital room with broken bones everywhere.

There was just that single word, the only option he had was to walk towards it as the pain that had briefly struck faded with every passing second.

Izuku had no idea how long he had just stared at the word as silent tears traced down the well known path of his cheeks, until he laughed. A hollow laugh which held no joy, an empty laugh with no emotion.

Then, after what felt like hours of absolute silence Izuku stepped towards the floating word and touched it. Instantly feeling like he had been dragged backwards through icy cold water his eyes snapped open to the sound of his old childhood friend snapping the usual insults but it fell on deaf ears as Izuku just stared forward with no emotion in his eyes, he looked completely blank at the situation.

Katsuki clicked his fingers loudly in front of Izuku's face and promptly snapped him out of his state with a loud "Oi Deku", Izuku eyes slowly met Katsukis and the latter of the two couldn't shake the feeling that something was undeniably wrong, like he had forgotten something and was having deja vu.

"If you really want to be a hero you could take a swan dive off the roof and hope to- Oi where are you going?!" Katsuki half yelled at the grennette, cutting himself off halfway through as Izuku bolted out of the room, ignoring his teachers and Katsukis surprised and angered cries as he ran to the rooftop yet again. The first time he had done this it had been after class had ended but he was back, he had no idea how or why. He heard Katsuki follow him up the stairs and heard the pounding of footsteps and a "What the fuck are you doing Deku?!" before he jumped again, the fall being too quick to register and pain spreading through his body like magma for a quick second before he was back to the word.

-This couldn't be real, it had to be some sort of nightmare- nobody could just come back, nobody could reset as they wished.

It was only a few minutes before Izuku touched the word this time, once again being pulled back to his seat at class with Katsuki hurling insults at him again. The same lines as always,

"If you want to be a hero so bad-" Katsuki began yelling but was soon cut off by Izuku as his lifeless eyes rose to meet crimson

"Why don't I take a swan dive off the roof?" He finished, that seemed to be the wrong move as Katsuki instantly flared with a new surge of anger and slammed his hands down on Izuku's desk just as Izuku ran for the roof again, running up two steps at a time to get there faster he didn't pay any attention to what Katsuki had to say as he jumped for the third time.

Again, it didn't work and he was back with his only option being to reset. Tears formed in the corner of his eyes, realising what it meant and just how real it was.

He, Izuku Midoriya, who had been bullied his whole life for not possessing a quirk had exactly that- he couldn't die, only reset. The one reason he had been bullied for so long, the reason that drove him to that roof in the first place was a lie- and he may as well have been quirkless.

The one thing he'd so desperately desired had been stripped away from him, the last thing he had ever hoped for was gone because he couldn't die. He hoped if he died enough it'd stop, he'd hoped that once he got past ten it'd end and the universe would realise.

Ten became twenty, twenty became thirty until he eventually gave up. He had tried pretty much everything, he'd jumped a good seventeen times with the hope of 'a higher building will be enough' until he'd jumped from the tallest and still woken up, walked into traffic, taken pills and cut his wrists wide open but nothing worked. At first he'd felt somewhat angry, that he had finally done it just for it to be thrown right back in his face again and again and again. By the end of it he just felt hopeless, useless because even though he had a quirk it was essentially that he couldn't kill himself properly.

The last time he died hadn't been intentional, he'd been walking home when some sort of sewer sludge villain had captured him- it was suffocating him and as tears blurred his vision some distant part of him thought a hero would come but they never did, this death had been longer and much more painful than the others as his lungs burned for air and the sludge covered his whole body. When he'd finally died and returned to the word he felt a shiver run up his body, the texture of it filling his lungs, the smell and the taste almost made him gag just remembering it.

He reset and taken a different route home, making sure to avoid any drain covers like the plague.

Eventually he'd gotten through the day, walked home without dying and having to restart halfway through again and he felt completely drained. Reliving half of the same day thirty odd times over wasn't exciting, before he opened the door he set his fake smile so his mother wouldn't worry too much.

Inko happily greeted him and instantly picked up on how tired he was,

"What's wrong Izuku?" She asked as he took his shoes off and closed the door, he gave her a bright smile

"Nothing mom, just a bit tired. I think I'm going to sleep a bit earlier tonight" He replied, desperate to just relax as his mother hugged him tight with worry evident on her face.

"Okay, I'll leave some food in the microwave if you get hungry" she offered before kissing Izuku on the forehead in a motherly manner, he smiled at her

"Thanks mom" Izuku replied, careful to not let exhaustion slip into his tone as he walked to his bedroom and collapsed onto his bed, body burning with phantom pain as he just lay there and stared at the ceiling with dull eyes.

Katsuki felt off, he couldn't explain it and had no idea as to why but he felt as though his brain had been scrubbed with a wire sponge as he had a massive headache, he felt like he was forgetting something really important but had no idea as to what it was.

It wasn't just him that was off either, Deku had been so blank the whole day and didn't seem to be hurt at all by anything the blonde had said to him- he looked as if he'd known what Katsuki was going to say, which was possible since he'd been bullied by him since he was 4. A lingering sense of guilt had ebbed its way into his mind, he didn't know why but every glance at the green haired boy was followed with a sharp pang of guilt and sadness.

Deku hadn't even gone to retrieve the book Katsuki had thrown out of the window, whenever he'd done something like that before the grennette would always scramble to save his possession but he just didn't seem to care anymore. It annoyed the hell out of him that Deku wasn't shaking in fear or begging him to stop like he usually would, did that quirkless loser think he was better than Katsuki? The thought made anger surge through him like fire, he scowled at the ground silently.

'Damn Deku, thinks he can ignore me like that' he thought hatefully as he walked home, hardly sparing a harsh glance in the direction of Dekus home as he stomped inside and slammed the door shut.

—

Izuku fiddled with a blade with his fingers, for so long he'd contemplated and now he'd done it the universe went 'fuck you' and now he had a quirk, he couldn't even convince anyone he had a quirk because saying 'I can reset time by dying' is a ticket to therapy.

For once he was thankful for Katsukis bullying, the constant burn marks and bruises had forced him to make his wardrobe long sleeved so all that was in there was full length sleeved tops and coats and full length trousers. After taking his shirt off to change from his slightly burned school uniform he spared himself a glance in the mirror. He was met with scars, a bunch of them as well. He glanced down to his wrists to see impossibly thick pinky red lines from the numerous times he'd slit them wide open. They still stung dully but the pain was fading fast, unfortunately the scars don't fade at all which left him with the same shade of pinky red lines scrawled across his torso, legs and neck. He lightly touched the blatant scar protruding from his neck, that would be more difficult to lie about but it wasn't anything a good bit of makeup or a scarf wouldn't cover.

He glanced around his room, to the all might posters he still kept up- he had given up on being a hero long ago but a small part of himself clung to the idea of UA, the future had been something he'd ignored for a year whilst working up the courage to kill himself since he'd thought he'd be dead.

He thought about trying out for UA, maybe they'd let him in on just the written exam... or maybe they'd see he was quirkless and deem him useless like Katsuki had.

He let those thoughts fester, he'd long given up trying to shake them after they'd been so persistent in staying.

_"You cannot become a hero without a quirk" _

Those words spoken by his idol had cut him deeper than any blade could have. They were spoken so confidently, like there was truly no way for him to achieve his goal.

Izuku slumped in his chair, he remember that reset clearly- All Might had said those 8 words and he'd jumped, All Might had yelled but had been at his time limit and couldn't do anything as he plummeted to the ground.

Tears dripped down his face slowly, but he felt absolutely nothing because what was the point?

Death was no longer a threat, he could do literally anything and reset with a quick death. Nothing mattered anymore, there was nothing at stake for anything- if anybody died he could just reset. He'd been hopeless before but this was the most hopeless situation he could have imagined, at least before he'd felt something other than this sinking feeling of nothing sitting like an anchor in his stomach.

Everything felt like it had been turned black and white, bland, colourless and boring.

Izuku grabbed a proper hold of the relatively small blade in his hand and plunged it into his neck, a sharp jab of pain that he didn't feel all that much after doing it ten times over. His world faded to black until the word reset popped up in front of him

'Why did I do that' Izuku thought as he walked towards the world and woke up once again, his body still cold and tingling from death.

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Just wanted to say that the first 3 chapters of this were written half a year ago so sorry if there's a slight change between 1-3 and the rest of the fic

If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive


	2. 2- Dying For An Old Friend

The worst thing about not being able to die was the boredom, the raw monotony of day to day life had just gotten ten times worse with the revelation that he would not be able to end it as he had planned.

Izuzku was bored, he knew he could do literally anything and just reset if there were bad consequences or he could do good things to brighten people's days but- without knowing why- just didn't want to.

Eventually he'd thought he'd gotten through the first day, gotten home and turned on the television with 'breaking news' in clear view as it showed the slime victim that had attacked him in a previous reset with another hostage. Izuku paid little attention to it until it mentioned the name of his middle school, he focused on it to see if it was anyone he knew and put down his partially destroyed notebook on the coffee table when he saw that the hostage of the slime villain was none other than his long time tormenter, Katsuki Bakugo.

Izuku felt like he should have bolted up in shock and prayed that he'd be okay but he didn't, a small dark part of him whispered that he deserved it, that it was the blondes karma for those ten years of torment. He felt like he should have been shocked but he couldn't find it in him to care, he just felt straining emptiness.

He glanced to the hero's who were doing... nothing? What were they doing? If the slime villain wasn't stopped they could cause serious damage with Katsukis quirk, not only that but there would be the death of a teen.

A loud yell from the tv broke him out of his thoughts, he could see Katsukis eyes looking around in desperation and pure fear as his oxygen depleted further. It should have make him shudder, make him wish that a hero would appear but instead he felt...odd. He felt almost nothing, knowing that his death or continued living was almost entirely in Izukus hands made him feel like he wasn't completely useless for once.

The news reporter grew more frantic as Bakugo slumped and his eyes closed, the camera shook and the woman who was reporting the news fell silent in shock. Izuku walked to the kitchen and got the sharpest knife they had, he balanced the weight between his fingers for a moment as he lingered in the moment of peace, for a moment he hesitated, the pointed blade stopped right at his neck. He hesitated to plunge it into his neck to save the life of his bully because maybe a part of him truly believed he deserved that, however small that part was he couldn't deny that he would have liked not to have to go back to what it usually was. The hesitation was short lived as he buried the knife the whole way through his throat and pulled it out, he felt a sharp stab of pain and instant light-headedness through which he could barely hear the cluttering of groceries being dropped onto the floor and a panicked 'Izuku!' Shouted by his mother as she rushed to his collapsed form and pressed her hands against his heavily bleeding wound in a futile attempt to save his current life. He was back at the black void in a matter of moments and didn't hesitate to go straight for the reset, he'd just try to tell Katsuki to head a different way home because of villain activity.

Unfortunately the plan of walking up to him and confronting him had been much easily executed in his head, the moment he'd warned him he'd flared in anger

"Don't think I can take care of myself shity Deku!" He'd yelled, somehow taking it as an insult

"N-no I just saw on the n-news and didn't want you to get I-injured" he'd stuttered, he may be immune to death but burns, bruises and grazes were pains felt all too much. Katsuki didn't seem to take this well either, it'd remain a mystery to Izuku how he managed to flip an expression of concern to an insult.

"Hah? Injured! I just said I can take it ignorant idiot!" He'd continued in a somehow louder volume and looked angrier by the second, Izuku shrunk back slightly before meekly replying with a

"S-sorry for wasting your time Katsuki" before he walked away, leaving Katsuki to turn back to his goons and 'tsk' muttering something about his time being wasted and to think something about how weird it was Deku hadn't called him by his stupid nickname. The bristley blonde practically stomped off with his two followers close behind, Izuku watched out of the corner of his eye and couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if he'd left Katsuki dead. He tried to ignore how much he wanted to leave him dead and finally have a peaceful life, he had felt like the price for Katsukis actions of harsh bullying to multiple students was his previous state- he could have let Katsuki die permanently, he could have saved himself and others from another day of his cruel actions, wouldn't that be a good thing? It wasn't like he'd actively caused it, just kept it that way through inaction- Izuku shook the thought out of his mind, he was depressed not _murderous _

Izuku was staying close to where the attack happened so when he heard explosions he went in the direction they came from with the intent of doing something to prevent Katsukis death, there was already a small crowd gathered with a few hero's just standing in the sidelines and watching. Again the 'what are they doing?' Question ran through his mind, this time he caught a whisper of 'more suitable quirk' as the three discussed what to do in hushed voices- wait for a more suitable quirk? Sure their quirks weren't perfect for the situation they were trying to deal with but somebody just coming along with the perfect quirk who was also a hero seemed pretty unlikely, at least unlikely before Katsuki suffocated again- leaving a child to die just because the quirks of hero's didn't fit the situation perfectly almost seemed cowardly, and far less than heroic.

He heard a panicked yell and saw two of the two hero's holding a woman back who was almost screaming with tears streaming down her face, it was Katsukis mother as was evident by the almost identical spiky blonde hair. Even though his mother was close to Mitsuki and the death of katsuki would almost surely bring her and his mother great despair he still couldn't feel anything. The emptiness settling within him was unusual, even as he stared at the face of a distraught mother seeing the death of her only child he felt a twinge of sympathy

One thing that put him off a little was why Mitsuki was here this time, before she had greeted him cheerfully when he'd returned home so she was a good ten minutes away from the slime villain. Why had it been different this time? He had no answer for it, he had no idea how his quirk worked and didn't know if he wanted to. Coming back from the dead was a grizzly thing to happen and it had to have some sort of consequence, probably a consequence Izuku would be better off not knowing.

Even though his hopes of someday being a hero had been long abandoned and he felt empty he didn't want to waste a reset, maybe a small part of him didn't want Mitsuki to watch Katsuki die even if the current world was temporary.

Izuku ran forwards, not really sure of the reason why- maybe he didn't want Katsuki to die or maybe he knew how reckless he was allowed to be as even if his life was ended he'd just return to the same day, maybe part of him hoped 'this one will be it', maybe a tiny part of him cared about the ex friend who'd tortured him for a decade. The distraught face of Mistuki had reminded him of his last death a little and Katsuki couldn't come back, as empty as the years of bullying had made him it was still difficult to just let somebody die when he could do something. The revelation of his quirk had really hit him and probably changed his mindset for the worse but he wasn't cruel enough to let someone die, at least not yet.

Izuku ran forward, pushing though the crowd and slipping past the heroes who were still holding Mitsuki back. Izuku ran forward and slung his bag as hard as he could at the eye of the slime villain which seemed to be the only place which wasn't completely made of liquid. The villain gave a sharp yelp of surprise and loosened it's grip on Kastsuki, as the liquid loosened Izuku reached in and grabbed Katsukis leg then pulled as hard as he could- successfully freeing him from the slime. As the spiky haired blonde fell down Izuku pushed him out of the way of the newly angered villain that reached for him, instead he grabbed Izuku and he felt the thick liquid wrap around his leg and pull him in.

And again he was drowning in the thick slime of the villain, the thick liquid again filled his lungs quickly and his eyes watered. He saw Mitsuki hug Katsuki tightly and yell at the heroes standing by to do something. He looked around a bit, he met eyes with Kamui Woods- a hero he had watched fight in the morning on one reset- the hero had wide eyes, panic and guilt being the two decipherable. Izuku's lungs burned and his black crept into his vision, he closed his eyes and waited for the black screen.

... but it never came, a strong wind knocked him out of the slime villain and he gasped hard for breath that was available to him. He lay on the ground with his vision fuzzy and distorted, pain blossomed through his side and burned in his lungs.

As the ringing in his ears subsided and his vision returned he saw two pairs of feet resembling that of the heroes 'Kamui Woods' and 'Mount Lady' walking over to him, chatting lowly amongst themselves as they walked over.

'Why aren't I dead' he thought, this wasn't how it went. He was meant to die so the world would reset and he could stop Katsuki, he wasn't meant to actively _save_ him especially not in front of a news crew. The heroes helped him up,

"That was incredibly reckless and you could have been severely injured, you should have left it to the heroes" Kamui Woods scolded, Izuku nodded

"Sorry, I should have left it to you heroes" the words felt wrong as they left his mouth, they felt like lies. Izuku wanted to believe that the heroes had been doing all they could to save both his and Katsukis life but he just couldn't, he'd seen them do little to nothing to actually help- they'd tried to calm the crowd and tried to assure Mitsuki that more help would arrive soon but they hadn't actually taken action against the villain threatening the lives of two middle school students and potentially others.

The news cast had swarmed Katsuki and his mother, the latter of which was loudly telling them to piss off as she began to take Katsuki away from the scene- presumably to a hospital. Mitsuki was walking towards him with Katsuki following, limping ever so slightly as he did.

Mistuki pushed past the heroes who did little to protest as the news cast soon migrated to the heroes to question them who did little to protest as the news cast soon migrated to the heroes to question them and a few tried to shove microphones in his face

"That was incredibly reckless, why did you do something so dangerous when there were pro-heroes around?", Izuku bites back a 'great help they were', he tried to push the microphone that is uncomfortably close away with little success

"Uh, I couldn't just... let him die"

"How did you know he would die? The heroes could have had a last minute plan you foiled with your actions, did you consider that?" Izuku tried to push through the crowd with a flock of three reporters following behind him

"No I didn't, I didn't want to watch Kats- someone die when I could do something" he began to grit his teeth a little harder at their questions

'_Last minute plan? He was going to drown and they would be happy to classify it as collateral damage!'_

"Maybe if you'd stayed out of it you wouldn't have gotten hurt"

"Maybe if I'd stayed out of it he'd be dead and they would have just stood by and watched it happen" he snapped at the news lady before scowling and pushing through people

"Why didn't you use your quirk? A dangerous villain attacked and you just used your schoolbag" Izuku turned to face them sharply

"Because I don't _have_ a quirk" he said clearly, leaving the people in their slight shock as he ran down an unfamiliar path and took random turns to loose them.

After successfully shaking the reporters he walked down the unknown path with his bag being held by the top loop, the rest of it had remnants of slime on it which he refused to touch. He was looking at the golden sunset as he walked and dropped his bag to the floor when All Might appeared out of an alley yelling

"I am here!", Izuku blinked a few times before picking his bag up and trying to go around the number one hero, he really didn't feel like talking to the guy who'd taken the last shred of hope he had and crushed it into dust

"H-hey!" All Might said in his loud tone, his smile faltered a little as he jogged a little to catch up with Izuku, after the looming symbol of peace trying to get him to turn around for a minute or so he sighed and turned around

"What?" His tone sharp, All Might almost flinched before spurting blood and reverting to his skeletal shrunken form, Izuku didn't react as he'd seen it before on the rooftop- Izuku grit his teeth a bit

"What you did there was very reckless young man! You could have gotten hurt" he said, the boy didn't seemed to be excited or happy to see him but rather annoyed, angry even, which was much different from his usual reactions

"So?" He said half to himself, All Might faltered in his decision- the boy had seemed the perfect candidate to inherit his quirk from saving that boy but now... now he wasn't so sure.

"Why did you do it?" He asked, hoping that he'd answer as a hero would, hoping he'd finally found a successor to keep the world safe. Izuku sighed

"I couldn't just let him die, drowning in sludge is the worst way to die.", the 'trust me' spoken only in his head, "Even if he does deserve it I can't stand by and do nothing", the boys dull eyes sent a shiver up his spine as he said those words with such lack of emotion- 'even if he deserves it', those words seemed to echoe in All Mights head as he looked at the teen and fear slowly crept into his mind. He tried to push away the feeling of 'don't', he needed a successor soon or the symbol of peace would die out who knows what would happen then

'_Even if he is a bit off he still saved that boy when he didn't have to, he still felt the need to do something- that's heroic in itself, to take action' _All Might reasoned in his head

"You have the makings of a true hero!" He announced, the boy laughed dryly

"Is this a sort of joke?" His tone suddenly much harsher, All Might swallowed

"Of course not young man! I'm looking for a successor to be the next symbol of peace, the next person to inherit my quirk 'One for all', you fit the-"

"No" it was said simply but cut through his words like a hot knife through butter, Izuku was reaching into his bag, All Might blinked at the blunt response

"N-No?" He repeated in a questioning tone, the cold hard look in his eyes sent a shiver down All Mights spine as Izuku pulled something out of his bag, the metal glinting in the dimming light as All Mights eyes widened

"Young man, what are you doing with a box cutt-" he started when Izuku flipped it around so the blade was pointing to himself

"This isn't how it is meant to go", his dull eyes flicked between the blade and All Might

"W-What do you mean? Please put the cutter do-"

"Choose a better successor next time" again his words cut through his easily, he plunged the cutter into his neck and pulled it out again leaving blood to spurt out of the wound. All Might had lunged forward to try and stop the boy but it was too late, he was left to bleed out in his former idols arms as he shakily called an ambulance. Seeing a notebook hanging out of his bag he reached for it with trembling hands, opening it randomly to find his own signature in large handwriting over two pages near the middle, his brows furrowed in confusion- it was dated this day, he had never met this boy before how did he have his signature?

All Might brushed it off as sirens approached and the puddle of blood growing around All Might widened as he desperately tried to stop the bleeding by pressing his hands against the gaping wound in the child's neck, he couldn't help the tears that escaped his eyes.

Izuku wastes no time resetting, coming to in the classroom he's seen far too much of this repeated day, he hears angry footsteps and the usual

"Oi Deku!"

_'Here we go again'_

_xxxxxxxxxx_

If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	3. 3-A Short Guide To Rekindling Friendship

Katsuki's head is pounding against his skull, throbbing in pain as a feeling of wrong settled over him like a thick fog, he swears he can see Deku dying every time he closes his eyes- Deku jumping off a roof, Deku walking into traffic, Deku stumbling into his front garden with his wrists slit and when Katsuki asks him what the fuck he's doing he just says 'Isn't the sunset pretty Katsuki, I want the last thing I see to be a pretty thing when I die' then he turns to Katsuki and smiles with blood in his mouth before he slumps to the ground and Katsukis screaming for his mum because he's dead and there's so much blood-

Katsuki snaps out of it, the memory suddenly foggy and forced out of his head, he looks to the curly haired greenette who seems so different from yesterday, so much colder than he usually is- he's not even responding just staring into space and he doesn't even flinch when an explosion goes off right next to his ear, his face stays hauntingly blank until Katsuki slaps him hard and makes those dull green eyes meet his.

A shiver goes up his spine at how dead they look and how much they remind him of Izuku sitting on that grass and bleeding out and- he scowls harder at Izuku who doesn't even respond and is just staring at him with a blank face and those dull green eyes.

"Come on Katsuki, Dekus being no fun today" an extra says by the doorframe

"Whatever Deku" he sets off another explosion right by his neck that leaves the skin sizzling but his face still doesn't change from blank, he just turns to meet Katsukis eye with an empty look, he turns around and stomped out of the classroom not before throwing his hero notebook out of the open classroom window, Izukus eyes just watch it fall then flick back to Katsuki who's angrily walking out muttering something about 'stupid Deku' which his lackeys laugh about, Izuku doubts they even heard him or found it remotely funny they just don't want to be another Deku.

After Katsuki leaves his sight he sighs a bit and walks to the window to see the pond his notebook is floating on, the fish are nibbling on it and he turns and heads for the stairs, then he starts going up again.

It's like retracing a memory going the stairs to the roof and remembering how long of a day it's been his shoulders slump in exhaustion and he trudged to the edge, he has no intention of jumping but climbs onto the ledge, sits down and dangles his shoeless feet over the edge.

Katsuki spots him and screams at him with wide eyes, he's already sprinting full speed towards the school to the surprise of his lackeys who feebly call 'Katsuki what are you doing' but make no move to follow him

"GET THE FUCK DOWN FROM THERE SHITTY DEKU" he's sprinting towards the school using explosions to blast him along the way, Izuku inches further towards the edge and swings his legs a little more as Katsuki bursts through the roof doors

"IZUKU I SWEAR TO GOD" he yells, the use of his real name causes him to turn around and face the blonde.

"Katsuki" he greets as if he isn't on the edge of a death drop, Katsukis lackeys are calling for him, he catches bits of 'leave him, who cares what happens', Izuku agrees with them silently

"Izu-Deku what the fuck are you doing" he demands, from the look in his eye Izuku knows something is up- could he remember the resets? Is that why he reacted so violently, because he'd seen it before? Or does he just care?

'_Who would care about you'_ that nasty voice in his head hisses, he agrees

"Sitting on the edge of a building, what does it look like?" He expects anger to flash across Katsukis face but he thrusts his hand out violently in his direction, Izuku flinches expecting an explosion but only finding his hand outstretched to him

"Huh" He mummers to himself

"Don't do it Deku! Think of your mum, just get down!" He half yells, the wind blows gently

"I'll get down if you come up" he said, at this point he's just seeing how far he can go, he has to reset anyway, can't have Katsuki thinking he's suicidal

To his surprise Katsuki climbs to the edge after a moments hesitation and sits down next to him

"Huh, Thanks Katsuki" the lack of nickname feels so wrong but he doesn't comment on it

"Come on Deku, now you can get down! Don't be an idiot!" He said brash as ever, Izuku smiled hollowly and kept his eyes to the ground far below him as he swung his legs gently

"I'll never let you die Katsuki, not forever, not again" he murmurs to himself but Katsuki catches it

"The fuck you saying Deku? I'm going to be the number one hero, I don't need some shitty nerd protecting me- wait again what does that even-", Izuku smiles then laughs cutting Katsuki off and leaving him to furrow his brows

"Yeah, you don't do you?" He responded, Katsuki was put off by his behaviour but he wanted both of them off that roof. The wind blew Izukus hair gently and revealed some large pink scars tracing over most of the back of his neck

"Deku what the fuck is that on your neck", Izuku stands up and brushes his uniform off

"Well death leaves some scars right?" He says cryptically

"What?"

"Nevermind, see you in a minute... Kacchan" He says, turns to Katsuki and smiles before taking a step back and plummeting, his eyes widen and Katsuki is after him, using explosions to boost him and try and just catch the hem of his uniform, if he can just-

**Crunch**

The sound is sickening and his body is quickly leaving a pool of blood, the extras he was with shriek and run into the woods but he stays, he lands on the ground and kneels by Dekus dead body with tears shining in his crimson eyes

'_This is your fault'_ forces its way to the front of his mind, he calls an ambulance and leaves his side when they put him on a stretcher and cover him with a sheet, he doesn't feel real as he wobbles to the pond, seeing Dekus hero book floating in the water he grabs it, tries to dry it with his quirk without destroying the whole thing and holds it close,

_'It's all that's left of him...' _his grip tightens on the book _'I have to hold onto it forever, it's the least I can do from all this mess' _he doesn't try to deny that it's his fault, every time he closes his eyes he sees Izuku hitting the ground, he can practically hear the bones cracking and the skin tearing and-

Katsuki blinks hard, he feels like he's missing something and whenever he closes his eyes he sees a broken body, his hand feels wet for some reason so he looks and in his hand is Izukus hero journal, he looks to Izukus desk and sees the number on the front is the same, this one is water damaged and looked to have been at the bad end of an explosion but they're the same

'_What the fuck!_' is what runs through his head, Izuku glances at him and they lock eyes, his eyes soften a little and he hides a smile by looking down, Katsuki glares at him the best he can when the only image running through his head is Izukus body broken on the ground, he doesn't know what it is but it feels so real, he can practically smell the blood in the air, on his hand. He looks to the notebook again and glances at the one on Izukus desk

_'What the fuck'_ once again runs through his mind and the bell goes off, Izuku stays behind like he's waiting for something, waiting for Katsuki to do something.

He stands up harshly, making the chair scrape backwards and make an awful sound, he watches the two extras leave out of the corner of his eye like they're scared of Deku, Katsuki slams his hands on his desk to get little reaction other than a look in his direction which their teacher ignores as he leaves the classroom

"Deku" he growls, Izuku takes note of the almost dry notebook in his hand that he's clutching like a lifeline and his brows furrow

"Where did you get that" it's more of a demand and it's harsh tone almost make him take a step back but instead her deepens his scowl

"None of your business shitty Deku!" Katsuki then reached over and grabbed Izukus hand and harshly yanked him out of his seat

"We're walking home together" His tone wasn't one to be argued with so Deku raised an eyebrow but slung his bag onto his back nontheless

"Sure", Katsuki almost didn't want to let go of his hand, to know he was still alive and that he wasn't deathly cold was a welcome change to his dead body, he doesn't let it go as soon as his bags on though and marches through the door with Deku being practically dragged by his hand a few paces behind.

—

The pair arrive at Izukus house after a silent walk the only event being when Izuku nearly walked straight into traffic and Katsuki harshly pulled him back by the neck of his uniform, neither comment on how similar it is to a decade ago but both think it, Izuku unlocks his door and goes in to find Katsuki right behind him, he takes his shoes off and the explosive blonde does the same. A note on the table explains why Inko isn't in the house but Izuku frowns a little about this and mutters about change under his breath as he folds the note and throws it in the bin

"Why did you follow me in Katsuki", his real name feels wrong to say but his nickname seems too endearing

"So you don't do anything stupid shitty Deku" he says, his anger weaker than usual, Izuku's eyes widened a little

_'Interesting, Katsuki might remember my resets- but to what extent?'_

"What like?" He knows he's pushing it, Katsuki glares at the ground

"It doesn't matter Deku! I don't have to answer to you"

"Ok ok... did you want to watch movies like when we were younger?" Izuku asks with his hands raised in an act of surrender, Katsuki sighs angrily at the question but doesn't object so the greenette begins gathering snacks from the fridge and dumps them on the coffee table, Katsuki sits down on the couch and clicks the tv on looking for channels whilst Izuku gathered blankets and dumped them on the couch, the blonde seemed stiff at first like he was ready to move but after half a movie he loosened up and leaned into the couch more.

The two didn't really talk throughout the movies, only in between when choosing what to watch next did they exchange words, just short 'fuck no that ones awful' and 'it's not that bad Katsuki' then a snatched remote, nothing meaningful to anyone else but to Izuku their 'friendship' had been gone for ten years, replaced with torment that drove him to that-

'_No, it was your own fault you were on that roof not his- stop trying to pass your weakness off as other peoples fault!'_

Katsuki had likely seen him fall, probably felt him die considering how drastically different this reset had been, Izuku leaned into the couch cushion with a blanket wrapped around him as Katsuki made a small rant about the outdated CGI and he watched the old All Might movie play, he smiled his first real smile for a long time and for the first time in a reset he felt content.

When Katsuki glanced over to Izuku he wasn't staring at the screen with a hollow smile and empty eyes, he was smiling softly with warmth he hadn't seen in his dull green eyes for years, content he turned back to the screen and tried to stop thinking of all the odd angles his bones had been bent at, it was vivid and hazy at the same time- some bits were clear as crystal like how bright the blood was, as if it was taken through a filtered lense, and some bits were covered in a fog which seemed to be some of the conversation they'd had. He remembered the panic and adrenaline that had coursed through him as he rushed to the roof, he couldn't let it happen again and yet it did, he could feel the guilt in his bones when he came to in the classroom

_'Does Deku have a quirk? Why would that shitty nerd hide it if it's why he isn't liked? Maybe it's a mind related quirk, making me see his death to make me feel guilty... but then why would we let me in, if he was trying to mess with me he'd leave me in the dark about it! Gah Deku you fucker why am I seeing you die?-'_

Katsuki was taken out of his thoughts by a tap to the shoulder, he turned to Izuku and grunted in question, he pointed to the black cased vibrating phone

"It's been ringing for a minute or two, I thought it might be your mum", Katsuki scowled and answered it

"What?"

_"Katsuki! That's no way to answer the phone!" _Mitsuki practically screamed into the phone, Katsuki moved it away from his ear suppressing a wince from the volume

"Yeah yeah, why are you calling me hag?"

_"Dinners ready in five, where the hell are you!?"_

"I'm at Midoryias calm down! I'll be there! I'll be there!", Izuku busied himself with turning the tv off and throwing away any wrappers

_"Inkos? Alright, just get home soon love you!" _Izuku smiled a little as Katsuki grumbled loudly and hung up then shoved the phone into his back pocket roughly and grabbed his bag and headed for the door, he opened it and paused before he left, turning around to face the greenette

"Deku... you have a quirk don't you?"

'_Shit, I can't deny it he has physical proof, how did he even bring my notebook back?'_

Izuku smiled

"Goodnight Kacchan" He said, Katsuki turned and scowled at the ground

"Whatever nerd" he said before walking to next door, Izuku closed the door when he was out of sight and quickly tidied up the leftover mess before heading to his bedroom, it seems his quirk had an effect on him as he was beyond exhausted and slept soon after he lay down without changing his clothes.

Katsukis evening was uneventful after meeting with Deku, he kept going back to the dismissal of his question- that was pretty much a 'yes', but was it memory altering? Was Deku really just fucking with him- would he mess with him that much, showing him constant deaths and forcing him to change? But why did he have the notebook if it was just memory altering? Was Izuku willing to go as far to replicate and damage a diary, then give it to him and alter his memories so it was like he'd seen him die, be carted off in an ambulance- did Izuku hate him enough?

Katsuki tried to shake the thought from his head, it'd take a lot of effort to place that many false memories in his head and they'd just watched four hours of films, if Izuku really wanted to cause some trauma he'd have done it alone... unless he was trying to freak him out in the presence of others and put him on edge?

Katsuki tugged at his hair a bit and let his head fall down onto the desk with a thud, dull pain resonating before he sat up and grabbed a pen and Dekus hero notebook- he could very vaguely remember Izuku walking straight onto a highway but it was getting fuzzier- he furiously wrote down everything he could remember, from the most recent that was still fresh in his memory to the last relevant thing he could remember.

He looked to the paper after, water damaged pages filled with handwriting a little messier than usual, he came up with fifteen- fifteen times he'd watched Izuku die, fifteen times that he could remember.

Would Izuku screw with his memories? If he could do that what other memories were false? Katsuki sighed angrily

_'Deku... what's your quirk, why am I seeing you die?'_

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	4. 4- Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

It's been a week since Izukus suicide spree and Katsuki is fairly sure he's stopped messing with him, there has been a thankful lack of an excruciatingly painful headache. The school day is uneventful, his lackeys learn to stop asking if they're going to 'have fun with Deku today' when he snaps at them and harshly tells them to go and fuck themselves, they give him an odd look but quickly get the message and drop it, they avoid Katsuki for the rest of the day and stay awkwardly silent during class as if their awaiting their next order. Katsuki scowled as he walked home, crossing the street when traffic finally thinned out and slamming his door open and closed as a greeting as he always did.

His mother tells him how long dinners going to be and he responds with nothing more than another scowl and a grumble as he slips his shoes off before he trudging to his room and slinging his bag haphazardly on the floor, he slams the door shut as be usually does and it vibrates the wall. His eyes wander to the slither of white that's the only evidence of the notebook that's hidden among the others on his bookshelf, tucked innocently between two books he doesn't think he's ever read, taunting him with the gruesome information contained within it's water damaged and burnt pages with only the couple few pages with any hero notes as the cover promised.

He tears his eyes from the notebook and swallows whatever feeling is rising in his throat before dedicating himself to the homework he was given today, focusing on it much more than he usually did as pen met pap-

-It's been a week since Izukus suicide spree and Katsuki is fairly sure he's stopped messing with him, there has been a thankful lack of an excruciatingly painful headache- wait not there isn't, it's throbbing against his skull every agonising second after the bell rang, all day Izuku's been scribbling in a notebook and everything was fine until the very second the bell rang.

His eyes follow Izuku as he scribbles something in his notebook and walks out of class holding it under his arm, Katsuki feels like he's missing something as the greenette disappears out of his view, he stands still for a moment before the thrumming pain in his head snaps him back into it and begins to walk home as he does every school day.

He grits his teeth a little as the pain flourished further as he crosses the busy road too focused on the pounding pain to wait for an opening- a car skims him and the driver swears at him, he yells something about watching the fucking road as the pain continues and he trudges home.

As he slams his door closed and his mother tells him how long dinner is going to be there is a small tight feeling of wrongness in his chest that twists his nerves and puts him ever so slightly on edge for whatever reason. He checks his cracked clock to see it's 3:20pm on the do-

-It's been a week since Izukus suicide spree and Katsuki is not sure he's stopped messing with him, there's nothing but the twisting of wrongness settling within his chest and the thumping in his head to support his thoughts and he doesn't even know where they came from he was just checking the ti- no he wasn't, he was closing his exercise book because it was the very end of the lesson and it was 3:2- 2:59pm just about to hit 3pm, right on time the ear-piercingly loud bell rang out around the school and did nothing but worsen his headache.

He packs his things up quickly and leaves, a couple paces behind Izuku until they got outside the school building and he went directly into the forest, which was not a quick way home and made no sense, Katsuki's eyes followed the other boy as he disappeared into the thick coverage of the forest as he lingered outside of the school, he looked away and began to walk his usual way home, dismissing any lingering thoughts. Crossing the road more carefully than usual for some reason and slamming the front door as he always did, his mother scowled at the noise and told him how long dinner would be as he wordlessly trudged to his room, dropping his bag by his door and closing it with a slam that didn't quite shake the wall.

Katsuki slumped on his bed, eyes wandering to the bag the homework he still had to complete was, and then to his bookshelf- a feeling of dejavu crept up on his mind as his eyes landed on the tiny amount of white wedged neatly between the red and blue on the other side of it. The throbbing in his brain had reduced to a thrum not quite bad enough to actually hurt but just enough to be irritating. Nerves knotted in his chest and settled as a weight in his stomach, his eyes fixated on that miniscule line of white that sat among the rest like it was any other, the rest of the world seemed so loud around him- the cars roaring by on the road, the clangs of pots downstairs of his mother beginning to make dinner for it to hit the table at 5. He glances to the clock on his wall, it was earlier than it felt- 3:20pm sent a light shiver up his spine at the strength of the familiarity as he watched it tick, the delicate sound seeming much louder than it was, he leans against his wall and closes his eyes for a moment, just focusing on the ticking before he has to sit up and do his wo-

All too suddenly his eyes are open and light chattering between students is all that fills his ears, his lungs are straining a little as he looks to the clock that's ticking it's way to 3:00pm.

It's been a week and Katsuki is sure that Izuku is still fucking with him, he can't remember anything solid but he _knows._ It's the same headache, the same ball of nerves that's only growing and last he remembers he was closing his exercise book and has no reason to be this worked up.

He latches his eyes onto Izuku as the bell rings and he packs his things up as quickly as he can, he see's him scribble something in his notebook holding it under his arm and leaving. Katsuki waits a few seconds before following, he's a good ten metres behind the other boy and as soon as he gets out of the school building makes a beeline for the forest, it feels sickeningly familiar as Katsuki tails him into the woods, Izuku doesn't look back to see if anyone is following him and strides directly into the forest with no signs of slowing down.

The forest is thick and fresh but Izuku pays it no mind, walking with purpose in a direction he seems to know despite there being no clear path to follow.

Katsuki follows a good few paces behind and avoids standing on any branches, occasionally Izuku will turn to follow a different direction and he quickly presses himself against a tree just in case and waits a couple seconds to look. Izuku continues through the forest for around ten minutes before stopping at a small clearing relatively deep in the woods, he places his schoolbag on the ground and sits by it, taking out a necklace and slipping it around his neck before checking his notebook- Katsuki can see his mouth moving ever so slightly but can't make out what he's saying from his distance. Izuku reaches into his bag and from it grips something that glints in the light allowed to bleed through the foliage, it flicks open and Katsuki realises with a jolt that it's a switch blade

"WAIT-", Izuku looks a little surprised but wastes no time in burying the blade in the side of his skull. He instantly slumps to the ground and Katsuki runs to the disturbingly familiar scene of Izuku's dead body.

There's a little blood running down the other boys face and his lungs constrict on themselves, he turns to the notebook that's still open to the page he was reading and

'test one: item passin-

It's been one week since Izuku went on his suicide spree, and Katsuki is sure that Izuku is doing it again from the four words he remembers- 'Test one: item passing'.

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	5. 5- Pleasantries And Other Annoyances

Today was a failure, Izuku decided after his final reset of the day, annoyingly the six days before that had also been failures and he'd made no progress in passing items across resets or getting the notebook back- as long as Katsuki had it there was a consistent memory that would serve only to get in his way.

All his notebook held was failures.

He snaps the book shut and glares a little at the cover- how did Katsuki manage to bring a notebook over resets? He still hadn't managed to recreate what happened and it'd been a week, he'd only managed to get through three tests before Katsuki followed him compared to the five of every previous day, none of the 34 items he'd tried had followed through resets no matter the cause of death or place he died.

So far he had nothing to begin to understand his quirk and with no progress to show on any front it meant he was no closer to dying, and it was already a week later than he had planned.

Dinner came quicker than he'd have liked as always, it was the one time of day he had to keep a smile firmly pinned on his face for fifteen minutes and it was exhausting. His mother was oblivious to the fact his smile was a little too tight, that when she looked down to her meal he let the light fall from his eyes, that he ate as quickly as he could get away with and any chatter was met with an almost robotic response that seemed to be just enough to keep questions away.

Izuku was sure nobody could get a glimpse through his act, no- nobody except for Katsuki for whatever reason, maybe it was because he'd seen him die so much or somehow managed to bring something back over, no matter the reason he knew anything it was nothing short of irritating.

Katsuki just continued to glance at him whenever he thought he wasn't looking, continued to follow him and interrupt his plans every few resets and continued to remember.

After that week of testing he insists on walking him home and when he seems non compliant resorts to dragging him out of the classroom by his wrist. If this had happened five years ago he'd have been ecstatic that Kacchan was finally paying attention to him in a way that wasn't in the forms of burns and bruises created as he laughed along with his friends, if it'd happened five years ago when he got so deep in his fantasies that it was just Kacchan rough playing and they were still best friends he'd probably have latched onto any form of care and held on like his life depended on it.

-But it wasn't the past and it never would be, he knew Katsuki was only making sure his own conscious was clear, it was just some ploy to get him to tell him the truth of what was happening so he could have it all figured out.

Every time Katsuki visited his house, usually following a particularly long string of resets or witnessing his death in person, it was tedious to be apart from research that could be done or theories that could be tested- a waste of time that Izuku often reset under the guise of needing the bathroom. Sometimes Katsuki caught him and he had to reset more than he wanted just to get the other boy off his back so he could work. It wasn't like he had a limited amount of time but he'd much rather shorten the period he has to be alive if he could, and with how little progress he'd been making on understanding his quirk it seemed like more of a far off dream than it had two years ago.

It's been four weeks since Izuku first tried to kill himself and so far every subsequent attempt, of which there is 107, has failed just and only left him with more scars- though he quickly learned to go for less noticeable places like his heart of the side of his head, not quick enough to stop a large pinkish line from being permanently etched into his neck that he's glad his school uniform mostly covers.

It's been four weeks and he hasn't made a scrap of progress, not once had he brought back any of the 63 objects he's tried. He still has no idea how to get rid of his quirk, Eraserhead's quirk would be the most effective but there was no way a pro hero was going to agree to erase his quirk so he could die properly.

It's been four weeks and the black x he marked on his calendar four months ago mocks him from across the room, reminding him of the rush of relief he felt when he'd decided on a date and everything felt calm and smooth.

People are annoying, Izuku decided after his mother caught him up in conversation for a gruelling ten minutes that pass just as fast as ten hours would. He thinks it a couple times when Katsuki practically drags him home and takes up of much of his time as possible, it's nothing but vapid content when he could be working and fixing things- he knows from all the tests there's nothing much more he can do, but he'd rather work fruitlessly towards his goal than be caught up in having to exchange his pleasantries as he pinned the most perfect smile he could muster to his face.

It's something he thinks a month later when he finally gets the notebook back, giving up on Katsuki ever willingly letting him into his house in the near future he just resorts to breaking in- it's not hard considering Katsuki left his window unlocked and all there is to it is being quiet. After his victory of obtaining his notebook Katsuki wakes up and ruins everything, he resets and just like the rest of his tests no longer has the notebook and has to start again.

He tries the next day after Katsukis forgotten or written it in the notebook which will shortly be stolen back, but again no matter how light he treads and how silent he is Katsuki is an impossibly light sleeper and catches him the next fourteen days he tries to steal it back.

Maybe he's just desperate that his notebook will hold something, a tiny scrap of information that'll put him a tiny bit closer instead of the flat line of progress he's had since day one.

Katsuki is in his way, and he's not going to be able to make any progress until he's out of the way and all he remembers is fogged over until he forgets it entirely.

It's two months and sixteen days since his initial death, 1:35am five minutes earlier than he usually arrives and this time he waits by the window and watches as Katsukis alarm goes off and he sits up in bed, glancing to his bookshelf then to his palm before checking the time and lying back down with his eyes open- he's waiting for him, and that's how he wakes up just in time as Izuku is trying to leave with what's his and has gotten caught the last fifteen days. Izuku waits outside of the window in the cold wind for ten minutes and watches every movement Katsuki makes, and then he does what he's done the last fifteen nights and enters through the unlocked window.

He keeps his eyes trained on Katsuki as he pads silently to his bookshelf and pulls out his notebook from it's familiar place, the other boy hasn't moved in the moment he's waited so he begins to leave until-

"Deku", Katsuki is sitting up in bed and Izuku turns to face him as he has the last five days, it's almost routine by now and it annoys him to no end that Katsuki is prepared.

"Why do you always have to get in the way", he's feeling the most he has since his first death and it's just anger- couldn't Katsuki see how desperate he was for this? Could he not let him have one thing? Could he not just go away for two minute-

With resolve he very suddenly knew what he was going to have to do, he didn't need the notebook he just needed to read it, he only needed two minutes and then he'd reset and it'd be all fine. Katsuki wouldn't remember, he probably wouldn't even feel it- it's not like he did anymore-

"What are you mumbling about", he dropped the notebook onto the floor, he had to do this- there was no other way he could read what were in those pages and he needed to do that.

"Just let me take it", if he says yes he won't have t-

"No"

"Read it?" if he could just say y-

"No"

He moves closer to Katsuki, one hand in the pocket of the uniform he's still wearing with his fingers tightly wrapped around the object that lies there

"I wish we could be friends again" forcing emotion into his voice, Katsuki's annoyed expression drops

"I-What?"

"Like when we were younger" he moves closer and he's gripping the familiar shape so hard it almost hurts

"When we were best friends" He wraps his arms around the other boy who's still sitting on the bed, his heart is pounding more than it has for months

"Why are you being so weird Deku-", he removes his hand from his pocket slowly and gently flicks it open "-if you want to be friends why didn't you-HH!-"

-The sound Katsuki makes when the knife enters his skull is breathy and shocked, Izuku almost feels sad as he removes the knife and he slumps into his bed, red eyes wide with shock fading to nothing. He's never seen someone else die but he moves on quickly- all he needs is to read the notebook and then he can reset and everything will be fixed and Katsuki won't even know.

Izuku flips the notebook open and quickly reads every entry by Katsuki, there's only twenty two and only one holds any information of value, the rest are just recounts of things he already knows- it almost feels pointless that he do all this for such little information.

He spares one glance to Katsuki who lays slumped on his bed which is quickly becoming soaked in blood before resetting.

When he comes to just as class is about to end he quickly writes down the one tiny bit of information that could be helpful as the slightest pressure on his lungs makes itself known, he ignores it and looks to what he found

'emotion=passing'

He doesn't look at Katsuki in the eye for a couple days.

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	6. 6- Deviation From An Unspoken Normality

Katsuki can't remember why, but whenever he meets eyes with Izuku's his lungs tighten and his whole body feels cold.

Katsuki can't remember why Izuku avoids meeting his eyes for a couple days when it was fine just the day before and nothing bad has happened for over two weeks.

Katsuki can't remember why he chooses to sleep on the floor for a couple of nights when his bed should be perfectly fine.

Katsuki can't remember why he double checks his window is locked at night, he usually leaves them open to cool his room down.

Katsuki can't remember why the words 'Deku steals book 1:40am' is written in messy fading sharpie on his hand since the notebook is still in his bookcase at home and Izuku is at school a couple seats away from him.

Katsuki can't remember why he wakes up in cold sweat at 1:46am on the dot freezing cold and can't get back to sleep for a full twenty minutes.

Katsuki can't remember a whole lot, but he knows that Izuku can.

It's two days later before Izuku meets Katsukis eyes again, as usual they don't give much to clue in on what he's thinking of and he's left to untangle what he says with no outside help.

It's two further days before Izuku responds to any conversation properly, talking with him is like playing a game of words that he didn't sign up to and didn't know the rules of, his tone is always a little lackluster, a little rehersed, a little too well spoken for it to be genuine- he seems as though he's prepared everything, confident in speech and even bored with apathy hanging in the air around him. Neither of them say what they want to and Katsuki gets the feeling that Izuku knows much more than he does.

It's hard to feel the playing field is equal when you're talking to someone who consistently erases and replaces your memories every few weeks and lies about it constanty.

Sometimes Katsuki forgets completely, unaware of the memories he's lost until he catches a glimpse of 'notebook' written on his hand in block writting, of it pinned to his bookshelf, of the reminder on his phone. As time goes on the less the writing in the book feels like his own as his memories of the events fade to nothing, and the more he considers it's just Izuku fucking with him in a really elaborate way.

"Why are you doing this?" tumbles out of his mouth before he can stop it sometimes and Izuku always has the exact same answer

"I'm not doing anything"

They both know he's lying.

Deviation from a routine so repeated it has become unspoken is perhaps the most obvious sign of change, so when Izuku- doesn't take a day off until he's a breath from death- Midoriya misses school and the only explanation is from Inko that he 'wasn't feeling well' it is immediately suspicious and when Katsuki enters his room later in the day and he is sitting on his floor and completely immersed in some book about quirks and quirk science with a stack of books full of different coloured post it notes, he looks like he hasn't slept and he doesn't seem surprised that Katsuki is coming in.

He shuts the door behind him and Izuku glances up very briefly before turning his full attention back to his book, eyes scanning across the lines quickly- there's an almost frantic air to his actions.

"Deku?" the words are hesitant, almost unwilling to interfere for whatever reason. Izuku doesn't look up and reaches into his pocket before dropping the hand mid-way looking completely defeated with the way his shoulders slump. He puts a sticky note on the page, shuts it and puts it on the pile that's half his height.

It' s silent for a moment and it almost seems as though Izuku is collecting himself before he speaks

"Did you need something?" his voice strains a little with the little emotion he's shoving into it, the way his lips curve tightly but his eyes don't change is unnerving in a sense

"You weren't at school"

"I'm ill", Katsuki glances to the pile of books and knows it's a lie

"What were you reading?"

"Nothing you'll be interested in", his answer is instant and almost seems rehearsed and suddenly his head hurts just a little.

It almost feels familiar, him lingering by the door and staring at Izuku in silence and for whatever reason he expects Izuku to excuse himself. And when Izuku opens his mouth he expects him to do just that, but instead he let's the air fill his lungs and exhales it slowly and it really does seem like he's letting Katsuki win in some way, Katsuki almost feels bad even though he doesn't know what exactly he's winning.

"Why do you do this", and for the first time it's Izuku asking, even though it doesn't seem like a question he expects to get answered

"Do what?"

"Come here"

"You said you wanted to be friends", for a second it seems like Izukus breath catches a little

"I've never said that"

"Do you?"

"Does it matter"

Unlike usual Katsuki doesn't feel like he's playing chess with his words, doesn't feel like Izuku is just lying to him and denying it, he still feels like he doesn't know something but it's almost like he doesn't want to know- there's still a coldness every time he looks at Izuku and he's not quite sure if we wants to know exactly why that is, if it's Izuku just fucking with him or something... more.

The silence they stand in is thick, Izukus lips are still pointed upwards a tiny amount but it seems much more unnatural than usual in the tense atmosphere, the only sound is both of their breathing and it feels like moving will break something happening that's bigger than Katsuki knows.

He can't just stare at that slight robotic smile for much longer so his eyes wander around the room, the excessive pile of books he's accumulated is stuffed with sticky notes who's meaning he doesn't understand, across the room is a calendar still on April with a black X marked on the first day of the month- the day everything changed so quickly. One day Izuku had been reserved and a little timid, the next he seemed like he was missing so much but he couldn't quite pin point what and it didn't help that his memories were more than a little fuzzy from that day with three or four versions of fuzzy memories with him not being able to decide which one was the right one.

Katsuki doesn't know how long they stand in silence but it seems like it's cut short when Izuku excuses himself, he almost feels like he should grab his wrist and stop him but he doesn't.

It's been three minutes and Katsuki wonders to the pile of books and flips the first one that Izuku had been reading earlier over to see it's cover and then the next two.

'The science behind Quirks'

'Quirks, science not magic'

'The in's and out's of Quirk genome'

Why did Izuku have so many books on quirks? Katsuki thinks as he puts the books back as they were and waits for Izuku to come back- he almost has a sense of knowing and dread so he wanders to the bathroom and knocks on the door

"Deku?" he asks and gets no response

He gently twists the doorknob and it opens, worn white door swinging open to-

Katsuki is back in class and he feels like his heart is halfway up his throat. He can't remember why, but after school lets out and he asks Inko why Izuku wasn't in school it seems chillingly familiar. As he's walking home and about to take the turn to go to Izuku's instead he stops, maybe he shouldn't see Izuku today, maybe he was actually ill. He ignores the tightness in his chest as he takes the turning to his own home.

Katsuki couldn't remember why he didn't go to see Izuku that day, but some part of him tells him that Izuku does.

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	7. 7- Occam's Razor

It's been ten months exactly since the day Izuku first tried to kill himself and came back, his initial process was frenzy- die and die and die again until something, anything works so he can stop coming back, stop waking up to that black void and white word, stop coming to a couple hours before and he can finally...

It's been ten months and now, it's time for the UA entrance exams and Izuku is trying out- not for the hero course but general studies, it is one of the best education centres in the world even for those not training to be heros so the choice was easy. What was not easy, however, was getting into UA.

He'd revised for a couple days, which didn't seem like a whole lot but everytime he finsihed reading and memorising it he'd reset and start over until he had everything down in a fifth of the time it would usually take- it was an effective approach, a little risky with how much more Katsuki seemed to notice since the... incident but he didn't overdo like he had the first day, the day he made that one fatal mistake that limited how much he could test and try out in one day and extended how many more days he'd have to be here.

It was easier to shift the blame a little than to face that he actually could not leave, that even if he had all the time in the world with no interuptions to test he wouldn't get an answer just fying over and over again in different ways.

It's easier to think that Katsuki had it coming with how long he'd been stringing him along when all he wanted was some information, it was easy to paint it that way and not think about it properly.

And as occams razor states, there should be no more assumotions made than neccessary, so despite Izuku knowing better he sticks to what's easiest and carries on.

Revision is his one set goal, just cramming every bit of information in those books into his mind and if he forgets something he'll just reset and do over. Katsuki has been keeping to himself much more for the past month or so, likely revising for the exams like him.

He knows he remembers everything he could possibly need, he's taken the mock tests online and modified his revision accordingly, he's searched up every hint of what the exams could be about this year so he can narrow how much he has to remember.

He's done everything he needs to, so when he enters that exam hall he is not worried at all, he's learned long ago that if anything goes wrong he has an instant reset button.

Izuku walks out of the exam hall two hours later with a slightly aching hand and a little bored, he finished 45 minutes early and combed over his whole paper five times and still had twenty minutes to sit and wait.

He hears two people talking about their answers outside, he slows his walk and listens in a little, they're discussing the eighteenth question- one he'd had a slight bit of difficult with himself. He listens for their answers and compares it to his own before walking onwards and stopping into the nearest public bathroom and locking himself in the furthest cubicle

Was it worth resetting because someone else got a different answer?

He trusts himself but he did have a little difficulty, and if he'd gotten it wrong it could drop his percentage 1%- and what if he'd gotten others wrong that he just hadn't drawn his attention to?

Izuku balanced the razor on his finger tip before rolling his sleeve up, he'd done this so much there was practically a 'cut here' line on his forearm.

He was back a couple hours before the exam and he breathed, the simplest explanation was that he had gotten some things wrong so he'd just study for that exact question and make absolutely sure he'd gotten it right.

He goes to the exam room, sits in the same seat as last time next to the same two boys and he puts his full focus onto the exams and combing every last inch of his brain for the information he'd so meticulously stored in there.

It's two hours later and Izuku walks out of the exam hall, he hears the same boys talk about the same thing and again he listens in. And again he sits in that bathroom stool and twiddles that sharp blade.

This is dumb, he's being dumb because he's revised that exact question but an uneasiness settles deep within his chest. He combs over every question he had even the slightest struggle with in his mind and makes a mental note of them. The easiest thing to do is to carry on and trust himself, to make no further assumptions about his possible inaccuracies.

He knows this, and yet he goes against it and resets, and then he sets to work.

It's a couple hours later and Izuku is standing outside of the entrance hall again, he's reset thrice to make absolutely sure everything there is to know about any question he didn't breeze through.

He walks in and sits in the same spot he has twice before, between the boy with the purple hair that defies gravity and one with spiky red, he sets his eyes down to his paper and focuses like he has twice before.

The questions are almost instant to answer he's done them so much, he has no doubt about how accurate he is as he writes in the solutions. Somewhere he's aware he's turning the pages a lot faster than the others but he's too immersed in the focus of it all that the rest of the world and even himself seems to finally drown itself out.

Izuku finishes an hour early, combes through his paper with an extra fine tooth eight times and counts the amount of support beams in the room for the remaining ten minutes. When he walks out he leaves with the useless knowledge that there are 132 visible metal supports and walks straight past the two boys discussing their test results outside.

He does not stop at the nearest public bathroom and lock himself in the far cubicle, he doesn't flip a razor between his fingers for a couple minutes whilst he thinks, he does not cut that line on a guide like a child who can't be trusted to even cut straight, he doesn't reset.

Deciding that the easiest thing is that he has a good enough test result and ignores the part of himself that wants to refine it further. He makes no further assumptions about his own work or how much he knows.

He follows occams razor

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	8. 8- One HUndred Percent

"He didn't show up to the arena, if he didn't complete the full test how can he be let in?"

"I agree with Aizawa, UA is the best school in Japan and somebody who only gives half effort can't be let in"

"He is quirkless and he was the only one to score 100% on the written exam, I think he's giving as much effort as he can- and he isn't applying for the hero course so why is the arena score needed?"

"Has there ever been a quirkless person to attend UA?"

"UA is not just a hero academy, it is also a school and anybody should be allowed in- quirk or not. He will be my chosen student"

"Are you sure Nezu?"

"Yes, I think Midoriya Izuku will be a very... intresting student"

It's the better part of two months before the results are sent out, the letter he gets is fairly small and addressed to 'Midoriya Izuku'.

He's almost a little nervous to open it at first but he swallows it and opens the letter cleanly with a razor and pulls out it's contents, a single sheet of paper

'Midoriya Izuku,

You passed the written exam with a score of 100% and the arena exam with 0 villain and hero points- however we've considered your situation and decided to welcome you to UA high school's General Studies department, we're pleased to say you'll be entering class 1-C when term begins next week and we look forward to having you at our school.

This year All Might will be teaching our heroics department and ,although he will not teach any of your classes, you may see him around the school, please feel free to talk to him or ask for anything as you would any member of staff but we ask you do not disclose this information to anybody else.

Nezu, the principle of UA, would like to meet with you before classes start on your first day and asks you meet him in his office at 8:15am on the first day of term'

Below it lists the items he'll need to get himself for the upcoming school and has the name of the website used to send over a uniform to him and the instructions for using it.

He put's the letter down contently, slight weight in his chest gone and satisfied that the work he'd put in paid off.

He glanced to the pile of revision books next to the stack of books on quirks that had pages filled with different colour sticky notes and important parts highlighted- despite all the time he'd poured into reading every book he could find and meticulously noting down everything and anything that could help, he still came up with no solid way to turn a quirk off or remove it without the influence of another quirk or chemicals they only allowed the highest ranking quirk scientists to touch.

Almost the last year had nothing but failures to show for, failure to kill himself as the black X marked on his calendar taunted him for every day and further failure in trying to rid himself of his quirk- this was the first thing that seemed like any amount of a success, getting into UA wasn't easy and now he was one step closer to his goal.

Izuku had decided months ago that if he couldn't tire his quirk out or find a work around, he would find a way to remove it- and so he decided to delve deep into everything to do with quirk science and intended to continue to work at it until he had a solution.

It seems almost ironic that the one thing that motivated him and allowed him to do anything and get out of a massive slump was the drive to die.

It's one week later and Izuku is standing outside the massive gates of UA in the uniform that's a little baggy and a tie that took him ten minutes to get right. It's 8am and he has fifteen minutes before his meeting with Nezu is set to start, and as he walks through the gates and shows his student ID to the reader he wonders why the principle wanted to speak to him alone, he doubted that he talked to every individual student at UA before they started.

He's studied the complete map of UA and knows where he has to go, giving himself adequate time to walk through the hallways and walks the stairs all the way to the top most right corner of the first building to the door labelled 'Principles Office'. He checks his watch and seeing it's just about to tick over to 8:00am he knocks on the door.

"Come in"

Checking the clock on his wall Nezu see's it's almost 8:15am and just on time there's a knock at his door and he calls out a 'come in'.

The boy he'd chosen walks in and closes the door behind him and turns to him with his lips tugged into a small smile, his dull eye's betray the expression he's holding.

Nedzus interest spikes a little

"Good morning Midoriya"

He gestures for the boy to sit opposite him at his desk and he complies

"Good morning Principle Nedzu"

The emotion he's trying to thread into his words of worry and nervousness is flat

"No need to be so formal, just Nedzu is fine"

He nods but otherwise sits still, unlike his voice is trying to be his actions don't make him seem worried at all

"I called you here to tell you that you are my chosen student of the year"

"Chosen student?"

A peek of genuine emotion breaks through his otherwise flat tone

"Yes, every year I get to pick one student who get's into UA regardless of score, quirk or other teachers opinions. Someone who I personally think has great potential, and this year that someone is you"

"Really?- thank you"

The first bit of his words he sounds a little suspicious, but the emotion doesn't stay long as it dies out to what seems to be his usual almost automatic response that lacked any depth.

There was another knock on the door and Nedzu checked the time

"You'd better get to class, wouldn't want to make you late on your first day"

"Have a good day Midoriya" he calls as the other boy leaves

"You too Principle Nedzu"

He opens the door and Toshinori in his weakened form is there, he seems almost wary around the other boy as he excuses himself and quickly walks past him.

The frail man closes the door behind him as he enters,

"Who was that Nezu?"

"Midoriya Izuku, my chosen student"

He looked almost confused

"Is something wrong Toshinori?"

He shakes his head

"I just feel like I've seen him before... during the sludge villain I think"

"I thought that was a very contained and brief fight?"

Toshinori shakes his head again in dismissal

"I must be thinking of somebody else then"

Izuku is two minutes late to class when he decides to park inside one of the bathrooms and reset, he can't be late on the first day of class what kind of impression would that make?

He comes back to 7:30am on the dot when he's still on the train and he doesn't dawdle looking at UA when he arrives this time, he arrives at the office five minutes earlier than before and knocks. Nezu calls him in and their conversation goes as it did before, he says the exact same things and everything is going right until-

"I understand that you're quirkless"

"Yes"

"I just wanted to assure you that any kind of bullying from any student won't be tolerated, UA should be a safe school for everyone and it will be enforced. I understand it can be harsh to be different sometimes and I won't accept it at my school"

"Oh, thank you"

Nezu says he can leave and they exchange goodbyes, he see's the deflated form of All Might down the hallway and continues the known path to his new classroom- he'll get there at 8:30, exactly when class starts and he mulls over resetting, he would like to get to class ten minutes early for a good seat in the back where he wouldn't be disturbed and enough time to set his things out so he didn't have to rush.

He heads to the nearest bathroom and resets.

It's 7:30am again on the train, he goes through the motions and takes the shortcuts to UA this time and jogs pretty much the entire way getting there and to Nezus office, he takes a short breather and checks the time- 8am on the dot.

He knows he's fifteen minutes early but knocks, hearing a 'come in' he pushes the door open and closes it behind him.

Hopefully the third time would be all it took, resetting too much in one day had unwanted consequences as he'd found out the hard way and the last thing he wanted was the principle of UA to know he had a quirk.

He sat down in the same chair he had twice before and strings that small nervous looking smile onto his lips.

Nezu is finishing off his tea when there's a knock at the door, he checks the clock to see it's 8am- ten, no fifteen minutes before he asked for Midoriya to arrive.

He calls for him to come in and the boy does so and closes the door behind him

"Good morning Midoriya, you're a little early"

Midoriya laughs a little nervously but his undertone is flat and it throws the whole thing off

"Just making sure I can get to class on time"

He sounds almost a little exasperated

"A punctual student is a good one"

He says before delving into a conversation he strangely feels like he's repeating. Midoriya looks a little bored but the small smile he's got on doesn't fit the mood.

For some reason Nezu expects him to be a little surprised when he tells him that he is his chosen student of the year, but it doesn't seem very genuine at all

He says about students bullying not being tolerated, and although he's sure he just thought he'd assure Midoriya that he will be safe here it's like he's said it before.

And when he leaves at 8:10am, Nezu thinks over his conversation with Midoriya- he can't forget anything so why can't he pin point exactly why he feels so strongly like he's had that conversation before? He's never met him before and yet he seems so familiar.

When Toshinori knocks on his door at 8:18am he almost feels like he's expecting it and he can almost hear him asking 'who was that Nezu?' which he of course does not say, because he didn't see Midoriya leave.

Nezu sips tea as Toshinori talks and he thinks back to the green haired boy who's likely just settled into his class seat and began setting his things up-

Yes, his chosen student Midoriya Izuku was even more interesting than he'd hoped for.

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	9. 9 -A Personally Replicated Daily Routine

Izuku's first week at UA comes and goes quickly, he doesn't restart that often so days seem much faster than they usually are- no repeating the train ride or repeating conversations that were boring to begin with.

As had become annoyingly the usual he had made no progress on understanding any aspect of his quirk, though it hit a little less than it had the first couple weeks after his initial death it still stung a little when his notebook contained nothing new for weeks and the black X on his calendar only rubbed salt into the wound.

UA had been a change but that too was quickly becoming another routine he had to trudge through- take the train, arrive fifteen minutes early, get through the first half of his classes before being dragged by Katsuki to lunch, finish the other half of his classes and go home, always looking at his calendar and occasionally picking up a book on quirk science if he felt like being disappointed.

It's a Wednesday and again Izuku is being pulled by Katsuki to the lunch hall, he gets a lunch he barely touches and, as per usual, Katsuki grumbles about it and Izuku half heartedly picks up a forkful and leaves it at that

Wednesdays are the one day that hold something that is a little intresting- Wednesdays are the days he meets with Nezu who changes slightly ever reset he's done around him. He'll add bits to his speech and seems to see through even Izuku's strongest fakes, his beady eyes glimmer whenever he's at all surprised by what he has to say.

Talking to the principle can be tiring, he has to pin his best fakes up for the whole time and has to pick through everything he says in case one word slips and everything falls through- sometimes he wonders if this is how Katsuki feels, knowing that the other knows more than they let on but not knowing exactly what.

Their conversations are fairly short, so around the ten minute mark Izuku expects to be dismissed soon

"All Might seems to be considering asking you to become his successor" Nezu says as he stirs a cup of tea

"Why?", it almost catches him completely off guard- he'd reset that time with the sludge villain and it had been so long ago, he'd almost forgotten about it himself but it seemed that All Might had remembered something, in the time he'd kept he'd never even met the hero

"He seems to see great hero potential in you"

"He shouldn't"

A brief second of genuine thought and spite slips past before he can go over his words

"- I wouldn't like to be a hero, it's why I applied to general studies not the heroics course" he tacks on quickly though has the dreaded feeling that the damage is already done with the way the principles eyes light up just a little at his slip up.

"You don't want to be a hero?" he sounds intrested

"No"

"Alright, I suggest you tell that to him if he approaches you- have a good day Midoriya"

Izuku exchanges the necessary pleasant goodbyes and heads for the nearest bathroom.

Nezu smiles a little into his cup of tea, the All Might story had been mostly fabricated to see if it would elicit a reaction- and much to his pleasure it did, a moment of resent that shined in contrast to the rest of his words all flat with the emotion showing through a little shallow and sometimes feeling forced.

It peaked his interest the distain he seemed to have for All Might unlike most people his age or even most people in general-

-and then it hits him again, the strongest feeling of de ja vu he's had since a week and a half ago when he first met Midoriya. Again he feels as though he's missing something, it is earlier than it feels and he expects his student to walk through his door despite his meeting being scheduled for two hours later.

The same feeling around the same student seemed more than a coincidence, but how could a medically quirkless student have any handle on memory?

He smiled a little to himself and again thought of how intriguing a student Midoriya Izuku was and just how intresting his choice was turning out to be this year.

Izuku makes it through the meeting without letting his words slip and screw him over and like when he reset before Nezu seems like he knows something, he makes a mental note to absolutely minimise the number of resets he does around Nezu as much as he can- considering the principles quirk he should have seen it coming that he'd be far more aware than anyone else.

The rest of the day is as uneventful as ever, as always Katsuki insists on walking him home and always manages to find him after school lets out. The train ride is tedious, Katsuki talks about the hero course he got into on the way back everyday, and it's met with the silent intake of things that seem important and a timed nod to make it seem as though he is paying attention for situations that he almost completely drowns out.

He departs the train exactly eight minutes after it left along with the hundreds of other people going about their personally replicated daily routines, bustling across the street in their own mind like any other.

Another routine he knew well was villain attacks, the villain would show and do something illegal then the hero would show and some short fight would ensue- the hero wins, the villain gets locked up. Same old good wins over evil.

Same thing Izuku ignores every other day and heads the long route home to avoid, there's no point watching a fight when he knows who is going to win no matter what-

-But this time is different, this time the villain that's just about to loose to the heroes just as always see's Izuku in his uniform fresh from UA just a couple metres away and makes a dash for him- he grabs him at his collar and drags him towards himself, pointing the end of something sharp that Izuku knows the feel of too well to not realise what it was.

"You're going to let me go or the UA kid gets it"

Brilliant, now he'd have to reset and take the train again.

The villain backs off into an alley way still clutching Izuku by his collar and pointing a knife at his neck a little too hard for it to not break his skin. He drags him out of sight of the heroes and then a little further, Izuku can feel his captors heavy breathing on his neck as the pressure on the knife lessens and the villain pushes him away to run.

Izuku grabs his arm before he can-

"Who do you work for"

"What the hell?!"

Izuku surprises himself a little with how quick he is to act on an impulse curiosity

Maybe it's because he doesn't like being dragged away from heroes at knifepoint and it reminds him of those years in middle school, maybe he's just curious and can ask anything he wants before he resets.

Izuku reaches into his uniform pocket and brings out the blade that fit's so familiarly in his hand, he pulls the villain down as hard as he can and presses it at his jugular

"Who do you work for" he presses a little harder, almost feeling something whole for the first time- this was nothing like that time with Katsuki, that time he'd felt his lungs squeeze him in guilt and this- this was completely different

"Jesus!- The- the league of villains ok! I work for the league of villains!"

"What is that"

"I- I don't know! I was hired to work for them I don't know much ok! Kid just drop the knife you don't know what you're doing!"

He only presses a little harder and his heart pounds a little, the adrenaline is almost making him feel more alive than he has in years. Of course he knows what he's doing he's been killing himself for a year- he knows exactly where to cut and how much pressure to apply, he knows exactly how deep his blade is and how sharp it is

"What do you know"

He's killed for much less information than this could give him, the thought of a solution being just at his fingertips seems far too good to be true but still makes his heart pump a little faster.

"It's run by some guy- All for him? All for one maybe? I-I don't know him I've never even met him- I've just heard his name thrown around by higher members- and-and that's all I know, I swear!"

Didn't All Might say something about 'One For All' the reset where he accidentally saved Katsuki? If his quirk was passing things on to 'all' maybe...

"Do you have a number"

Katsuki made the mistake of being stubborn, he just hopes this villain is smart enough to give him what he wants so he doesn't have to go further- a tiny part of him lathers in the thrill of power

"What?- For the league- I-I can tell you, you'll let me go after right?"

"Yes"

The villain lists a string of numbers that Izuku burns into his brain, he lets go of the hard grip on his wrist and drops the hand at his neck- the villain runs away immediately, feet slamming so hard against the pavement he can hear it for a couple seconds.

Izuku grabs a pen from his pocket and writes that string of numbers down on his palm, it was a stretch at best but if there was any semblance of a chance that he could do something.

What was he going to do now? He had to reset but how would he make sure he knew the numbers were in the right order? He didn't have much time to figure it out since Katsuki would no doubt come looking for him or worse the heroes at the scene. He carried on checking the alley as he racked his brain for any kind of solution, nothing he tried came over resets all there was was the scars covering a lot of his body-

The scars, of course how had he not thought of that before? The one item he did carry across was his own body and the damage he'd done to it

Izuku clutched his trusted weapon in one hand and carved each individual number fast and what he knew was deep enough into his other arm- blood poured from his fresh wounds but he finished the string right as the darkness consumed his vision and he succumbed to the void of in-between he'd grown so used to over the last year.

He came to on the train, arm still stinging and Katsuki still filling the silence with null conversation devoid of purpose. Izuku almost smiled at this eventual success, however minor there had to be a villain who could do something- he'd considered it before but now he had a method to make it happen and that black X on his year old calendar seemed more like a lure to his happy fate than a cruel reminder of what could never be.

Izuku carefully dialled the number carved into his arm into his phone, it rang a couple times and he expected it to go to voicemail and for this to be another mark on the long list of failures his past year had held- it rang four times before the line came to life. His chest tightens a little and for once he feels like he's done something.

Izuku swallows the slight ball of nerves in his throat before he speaks to the stranger on the other end of the line

"How did you get this number?"

"I need to speak to All For One, I have a problem I think they can solve"

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	10. 10- To Think A Pleasing Lie

It's third lesson and as usual Katsuki's mind begins to wonder to Izuku and just like most days it begins to eat at him from the inside and the worry begins, every time he doesn't see Izuku for a couple hours or know where he is there's a growing ball of nerves that doesn't fuck off until he's caught even a glimpse of that green hair, his thoughts run in every direction about what Izuku is doing and for a reason he can't remember every time he opens his room door after not seeing him during school or opens up a private door he has the growing feeling of dread that prickles over his skin like a hundred needles and gruelling images flash through his mind that last just a moment before they fade into the forgotten.

It begins with a slight tapping of his pen against his desk, he barely notices he does it most of the time and it's only when his hand starts to ache a little he fully realises the tapping- sometimes he tries to stop but it builds like heavy tension in his hand and his brain starts to clog up, it isn't usually long before he gives in to the building pressure and starts tapping again.

After a while it progresses, worry takes a vice grip on his brain and he cannot block out the endless thoughts whispering about how much has gone wrong and how he did nothing to stop it.

Every time Izuku was out of his sight for too long or he had no knowledge of his wherabouts his mind leapt for the worst scenario and it made his lungs tighten- Izuku was dead, he was beaten, lost, captured, he'd done something awful- where had that last one come from? Katsuki was sure there wasn't a bad bone in Izukus body an doubted he could intentionally hurt let alone kill someone- for whatever reason the growing ball of nerves in his chest disagreed and it only served to make his mind eat at him more about whatever memories he could be missing.

Katsuki knew that it was Izuku was the one who fucked with his memory, gave him all those awful headaches and the images of his dead body, the worry that ate at his mind endlessly- all things he resented and kept him awake at night but weirdly he put up with it and didn't complain, maybe a part of him thought he deserved this and that it was his fault.

It almost stings to see how little Izuku cares but he tries to pass it off as being tired, he's sad and he does care he just can't show it because he's caught up in his own head, he's focused on work so he can't pay full attention and it'd be selfish to expect him to, he's just had a hard day and he's not in the mood to talk. It's much easier to think a pleasing lie that than to face the truth.

Katsuki can pretend all he likes that the reason Izuku is suddenly a little better is as innocent as he was when they were kids but the part of his mind he tries to silence knows that Izuku is not that same little boy with hope for heroes and there is something much darker wrapped around Izuku that makes Katsukis blood run cold sometimes, deep down in the parts of him self he doesn't listen to he knows whatever reason Izuku is very suddenly hopefull cannot be good for anybody.

Before he lights up Izuku gets taken by a villain and Katsuki is trying to shove past the pro's telling him that if he goes after his friend he will be hurt and it's best to do what the villain says to avoid unneeded causalities- his mind is swarmed with endless possibilities and his lungs are closing in on themselves, he needs to catch even a glimpse of Izuku safe just so he knows.

He runs the other way of the alley Izuku was dragged into at knife point and used as bait for some low level villain to get out of being caught, it makes his blood boil that they had just used him like some get out of jail free card.

He's searching the alley and calling out Izuku's name every couple of moments and straining his ears for any semblance of a response- as long as he doesn't resist the villain he'll be fine right? That villain wouldn't want a murder charge as well right?

His attempts at soothing the panic in his own mind doesn't help his racing thoughts and straining lungs at all.

It's been three minutes of painfully loud panicked thoughts, in the back of his mind he hates himself for being so weak as to succumb to these thoughts but in the forefront he hates himself for not being strong enough to do anything, not being smart enough to think ahead to this situation and prevent it by taking their uniforms off before they left the school, that's why he'd been taken right?

After three minutes of battling his lungs to work and his heart to stop pounding in his ears he catches a glimpse of green hair and he sprints for it, a growing feeling of dread settling over his whole body like the worst case of pins and needles, he can feel them on every inch as he rounds the corner to the alley and is hit with the worst possible sight.

It's Izuku, his arm is caked in his own blood and he can't make out whatever has been carved so deep in his flesh that it killed him. Katsuki runs to his side and feels his neck, there's a fast fading pulse he can barely feel even when he pushes his fingers as hard as he can.

He's shoving his hands against the gaping wounds he knows will kill the boy below him, he still pushes in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding even a little- he knows a little about how to do it but he's so frantic to do something and his mind is so full of thoughts bubbling over he hasn't the room to recall it.

The dread is washed away by heavy waves of regret that fills his lungs until he feels like he's drowning, his hands are covered in blood that's not his own and all he can focus on is Izukus truly empty face, his eyes are half lidded and more dull then they've ever been before.

He wants to scream and beg for something to happen that stops the inevitable he knows is coming, just pleading endlessly in his mind for somebody to come along with the perfect quirk who knows exactly what to do, or even for him to be able to do anything- to be able to stop the bleeding or to know how to get Izuku to wake up again and not let him die.

Katsuki feels so weak as Izuku dies right below him and he can do nothing about it, it feels familiar in a way he can't place as he crouches over Izukus dead body that's still clutching a blood covered flip knife in a pool of his blood. He hates himself for not being able to help this at all, he hates himself for not being strong enough to go through the pros and beat that villain, if only he'd-

It's a week and a half after he started at UA and for one of the first times in a year he seemed to be hopeful of something, Katsuki didn't know what since last he remembers he was on a boring train ride drabbling about his day to fill the painful silence that reminds him of that truth he's trying to snub out in his mind, as usual Izukus responses are vapid, just nodding and saying 'yeah' and other meaningless phrases at the right time an it feels more like he's reading a script to a brick wall than talking to another person. It's halfway through this conversation that Izuku seems to suddenly just light up, like a fire has been lit inside of him and for the first time in a year there's a glimmer of light that reaches his eyes properly.

Katsuki doesn't know what happened in the second or two that it took for Izuku to seem alive instead of a stumbling corpse but if the growing ball of dread that's sinking to his stomach is anything to go by it can't be good. He tries to ignore it and just be happy that Izuku is a tiny bit better than he has been for the last year.

He thinks to how utterly defeated he looked sitting in his room by a stack of books, how devoid of hope his eyes were and for a moment Katsuki could not see a person in there, just empty sadness in the same shape of one. So for now, as long as he doesn't know if why Izuku is living now he can pretend it's good, he can shove any doubts or coiling dread aside and just be happy for him.

For whatever reason Katsuki insists that he and Izuku change out of their uniforms before they walk home for the next couple days, he can't explain why but he feels a flash of panic whenever there's a common villain attack on the way home for the next week and he drags Izuku the opposite direction and insists they wait it out for ten or twenty minutes until the fight is over and the pro's have taken care of it. Izuku seems a little annoyed that Katsuki gives him his hoodie everyday and asks he put it on before they leave, or that everytime the fairly common villains attack that are nowhere near a match for a pro hero he drags him off, but just as when Izuku is annoyed about anything else it's always contained to a slight twinging uninterested look in his eye that almost hurts more than if he just outright said so.

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	11. 11- The Theory Of It Is Simple

"-I want my quirk gone"

"And why would the league ever help you?"

"Because I'm a student at UA"

It' been seventeen or so hours since the phonecall he'd made to the League of villains and they'd been very quick to be suspicious and make him prove that it was a serious offer and he wasn't some sort of double spy.

He had one task, one he suposed would be fairly easy considering his quirk- he had to steal the information about the upcoming first year hero course trip to USJ.

It was simple in theory, the league would cause a distraction with the press and create chaos in the hallways as everyone tried to evaccuate, then he could slip into the teachers longue undetected and snag the file sure to be around the homeroom teachers desk, all he had to do was read the file and relay the information after a reset.

Though as everything else, it was always much easier in theory.

An alarm sounded through UA, loud and blaring

'Warning level 3 security breach, please evacuate the building in an orderly fashion'

Izuku unlocked the bathroom stall he'd been waiting in and heard the commotion from the corridoors- he'd chosen one closer to the teachers areas, they wouldn't clog up the hallways like the mass amount of panicking students would and they'd soon all leave to move students along and make sure everything was going smoothly.

Izuku waited for two minutes before slipping out of the bathroom and looking down the hallway- nobody to be seen.

He started going through the actions he needed to, walking down the hallway quietly with ears straining to listen for any people who may be coming his way whcih was fairly difficult over the blaring alarm that really was starting to get annoying.

The teachers longue was in sight, he approached it and gently turned the doorknob- as he had expected they didn't lock it in the hurry to calm students down and make sure everybody was evacuating.

If it opened anything other than quietly he couldn't tell and glanced around the room before declaring it empty and entering, closing the door behind him.

His eyes darted around the various different cabinets and desks labelled with different teachers names, when he landed on 'Aizawa Shouta' which was in the far right corner he walked towards it slowly, looking back to the door every other second.

Just as he'd reached the desk and began looking on the desk for any information about USJ he turned to look at the door as a precaution to see the doorknob turning and it beginning to swing open- acting fast he pulled the chair at the teachers desk back and crouched under the desk, watching as one of the teachers opened the door and walked in

"Is anyone still in here?" they yelled over the alarm

Shit, he was going to walk over here and see Izuku under the desk and there would be so many questions- it was hardly a choice to reach into his pocket and brandish his usual weapon and turn it on himself.

He came to in the same bathroom stall he'd been hiding in a couple minutes ago and sighed quietly to himself, he hadn't even found the sheet yet and he could only hope it was actually at his desk and not under tight lock and key- the league had said that they were sure it was but could he really trust the word of villains?

'Warning level 3 security breach-'

Izuku blocked the alarm out as he checked his watch and waited eight long minutes with nothing but that blaring noise for company, as soon as it had passed he unlocked the door and walked out of the bathroom- checking down the hallway and see's nothing of the teacher that'd made him reset, at least he was out of the way.

He had walked down the hallway and had just reached the outside of the teachers longue when in his periferal vision came the last thing he wanted to see- Katsuki barelling toward him from across the hallway

"Izuku!" he was very out of breath as he neared Izuku and the other boy had half a mind to just bring out his knife and-

"Where were you? You said you needed the bathroom but then the alarm- why didn't you evacuate"

"I got lost in the people evacuating and shoved aside"

Katsuki grabs his wrist and starts pulling him along

"We better get evacuated before people come looking for us"

What Izuku really wanted to do was to pull away and reset right there, but he knew that doing that in front of Katsuki ended in him remembering more than he was supposed to.

He allowed himself to be dragged by Katsuki to the swarm of students and then back to lunch when the threat was ruled to only be the press. It was a long ten minutes of waiting for the chance to get away for ten seconds to reset, as soon as they got back to the lunch hall Izuku excused himself again, giving the excuse that the alarm had gone off before he'd actually been able to get to the bathroom.

Izuku resets without second thought and wakes up in the exact same place but twenty minutes earlier, it had been a little disorientating since he'd never reset and then woken up in the same place but he shook it off and carried on as he was meant to- waiting two minutes almost got him caught by a teacher and waiting eight got him caught by Katsuki.

He waits four minutes in the bathroom before slipping out and following the same hallway he has twice before, it's silent other than the blaring alarm that's really starting to grate on his nerves and he reaches the teachers longue.

He opens the door and looks around inside, after confirming it was empty he slips inside and closes the evidence he ever entered behind him.

This time he heads straight for the most right corner and starts rummaging through all the papers on the homeroom teachers desk- first test results, something about a class president election and then finally under a couple sheets meaningless to him is the information about USJ, a parental permission sheet detailing the time and place that USJ would take place-

Izuku slips a flip phone he was instructed to buy out of his pocket and dials the number etched onto his skin forever

"You got it?"

"Yes-"

Izuku relays the information of the sheet he's holding to the person on the other line who scowls audibly when he finishes

"This isn't good enough- we want to be shown a physical copy of the sheet not just information, it's not enough to make sure it's true"

Izuku is about to stuff the sheet into his pocket when he hears Katsuki calling his name over the sound of the alarm- he wouldn't have time to actually steal the sheet and leave, this was throwing his theory off.

"I'll try again" he says more to himself than whatever villain is on the other end of the line, he wastes no time in bringing out his trusted weapon and resetting, there's a blurry end of Katsuki entering the room and-

Izuku is back in the cubicle and uses the four minutes he has to re think his theory over- the league would cause a security breach with the press, he'd sneak into the teachers longue and get the sheet he knows the exact location of, he'll leave the longue with the sheet just before Katsuki comes looking and they'll evacuate together, he'll tell the same lie and nobody would suspect a thing.

Just as his last one, he knows that it is a lot easier in theory than in practise but hopes this is the last reset he has to do for the day, too many is risky especially at UA.

Izuku leaves the bathroom after four minutes pass and sets his mind to making it to the teachers longue- he barely gets ten steps before he hears his name being called and a Katsuki who is a good four minutes earlier than he's meant to be is running at him- a deviation was the opposite of what he needed as the alarm wound his nerves a little tighter, he really was not in the mood to relive ten minutes of evacuating

"Izuku! I've been looking everywhere for you, we should evacuate with the rest of the students- this alarm is giving me a real headache"

As Katsuki is dragging him along and they encounter the same teacher from the first time around an idea sparks in his mind- maybe Katsuki being early wasn't such a setback after all.

He waited for the call about it just being news people to be given and soon he and Katsuki were back at their lunch table, and just like before he uses the same excuse and resets in the same bathroom.

He wakes up in the same place and waits exactly two minutes before slipping out of the bathroom and walking to the teachers longue, keeping an eye and ear out for either people who keep getting in his way.

He makes it to the longue and enters quickly, he looks out of the small window on the door and when he see's Katsuki run by he ducks a little

"You should be evacuating with the rest of the students! I'll show you to the evacuation point" he hears the voice of that teacher and breaths a small sigh of relief- luckily the small deviation had been perfect for getting them both out of his way.

He walks to the desk he needs to and grabs the sheet right away, he's just tucked it into his pocket and turned to leave when the doorknob twists and he can see black hair in the window of the door from the other side, it's too late to do anything as the teacher he was just stealing sensitive information from is standing right there

"Why are you in the teachers longue? You should be evacuating with everybody else"

"I got pushed out of the hallway and got lost, I don't take classes in the hero section and don't know where I'm going"

Aizawa doesn't seem to believe that at all

"Come on, I'll show you the way"

As soon as his back is turned Izuku pulls out his weapon and resets, he is not going to sit through another evacuation today, in the few seconds before death he sees the teacher turn around and begin to-

Izuku is back in that bathroom, he'd literally had what he needed in his pocket and then-

He sighed a little, today was tiring and long and the alarm that had just started to go off was really not helping his mood.

After four minutes he left, entered the teachers longue, hid under the desk that hid him the most and waited- Aizawa entered the room and looked around for a couple seconds before leaving.

Izuku breathed a small sigh of relief to himself and got out from underneath the desk, quickly picking up the sheet he needed and putting it into his pocket after a couple of folds.

He kept a hawks eye on the door as he walked towards it and opened it slowly, quietly checking the hallways for people as the alarm finally shut off. He closed the door behind him gently and went back to that same bathroom he'd woken up in four times.

The phone rang twice before it was picked up

"Did you get the information"

"Yes, I have the sheet, nobody saw me"

"Good, we'll text you the adress to drop it off at"

After his tiny phone dings and he writes the adress on a piece of paper and tucks it into his pocket, he dumps the burner after snapping it in two- he makes a mental note to get a couple when he goes out that night.

"Izuku are you in here?"

Izuku puts on his best and unlocks the cubicle

"When I didn't see you in the evacuation I was worried- where did you go?"

"I did evacuate just with a different group, I came back here to get my bag"

Katsuki's expression changes from tight worry to calm acceptance, it's almost too easy to lie to him since he seems to believe whatever he wants to hear

"Ok, well we better head back to lunch- and maybe stop into recovery girl because my head is killing me, I think it was that alarm"

He continues to make light conversation and Izuku is hyper aware of object in his pocket, maybe it's the ticket to getting exactly what he's wanted for years, to think one little sheet of paper could be the answer to all his prayers when he'd spent so much more time testing over and over and over again for nothing but failures to be made.

On some level he's aware that Katsuki is eyeing him a little weirdly with his brighter than usual demeanor but he is too caught up in the thought of being free to care even a little if Katsuki knows something is up- he has before and yet he won't leave, Izukus killed him and he's sure Katsuki has to know that something was up and yet he stuck around, he knows it will take much much more to make Katsuki give up on his hope, and a tiny part of him is curious as to just how far he can push it, just how much he can do before Katsuki says 'enough'- killing him? Killing people? Hurting people? Dying in front of him so much?

It's a morbid thing to wonder what would break a person, but Katsuki has put up with so much whether he's aware of it or not that Izuku just has to consider what would break him- maybe he could test what he remembers? For how long? Test if he remembered it all, none or it at all or just tiny snippets of it.

Izuku was ever curious as to why Katsuki could remember, and if he would listen to that part of him that savoured the thrill of holding power then maybe he would let himself test it out

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	12. 12- Between A Scorch And A Flicker

That night Izuku seals the stolen sheet into an envelope and stops at the address scrawled on a piece of paper, he knows he'll probably have to do more for them to even consider him for talking to All For One and he wasn't actually sure if he could help or they were just bluffing, but he guessed it was worth a shot since he didn't have anything to loose.

He was willing to do pretty much anything they wanted him to do if it put him closer to his goal, put him closer to the black X on his calendar.

The address he's sent to is an old house, the windows are mostly boarded up and the ones that aren't are broken. He pushes the door open and it creaks as it moves, if he had been able to be harmed or killed he may have been a little creeped out at how desolate and empty it was- a good place to kill someone and not get caught.

He lingered on the thought as somebody else walked in, covered in a long coat and looking like someone who you'd avoid on the streets.

"You the UA kid?" his voice is a little raspy

"Yes"

"Got the information?"

Izuku hands him the white letter with nothing written on the front, the man slices it open and checks the contents

"The league thanks you"

It's a couple seconds and he's pulled a gun and shot Izuku in the chest, he falls to the ground and it's not long before the black in-between takes him.

Izuku comes to at 12am on the dot, it's a little annoying that he's going to have to go to another shady looking 24 tech shop in the part of town his mum has warned him about for years, and it's more annoying that he was killed and has to go through the next two hours again.

He seals the letter shut again, sneaks out of his window again, walks to the same tech shop and buys the same burner, walks through the run down part of town and arrives at the building a good ten minutes early and hears two voices, that was new.

One is over a phone line that he can't make out and the other is the man that shot him

"You want me to shoot the kid?"

"To injure or kill?"

"Make an example... got it"

The man clicks the line off-

"Did the league tell you to kill me"

he seems surprised that Izuku is there

"I guess you heard that" he begins to reach into his pocket

"Why do they want me dead, can I at least know that before you shoot me"

"How did you know I was going to-" he sakes his head lightly and pulls the same gun out of his pocket "- because you're a spy, now UA will know not to try and fuck with the league again because their kids will get killed"

"Ok"

"Ok?"

"You're going to shoot me whatever I say so is there a point to dragging this out? Just shoot me already"

"You crazy suicidal or something kid?" he shakes his head to himself and raises the gun, he doesn't hesitate in shooting him in the chest, though this time it's a little lower and he doesn't slip into the darkness after a short few seconds

"The kid you hired is fucking insane Shigaraki, pulled a gun and he said he 'wanted to get it over with'- yeah of course I got it" he says into some sort of transmitter on his sleeve, Izuku makes note of it before he departs.

Izuku wakes up at 12am on the dot and thinks he might just have a way to get out of being shot, it's risky but he supposes he can take as many risks as he wants, Katsuki has been asleep for too long to wake up and bother him.

He sets to work, wearing some old winter gloves to seal two letters- one holding information marked with a black X and the other plain and empty-, he grabs a little extra money and sneaks out of the window earlier than before , he thinks he could get away with leaving out of the front door but doesn't want to risk it just in case.

He stops at the tech store like he has twice before but instead of heading straight to the old rickety house he's died in twice he heads to an equally shady store and buys a small packet of lighters- whoever serves him barely looks at what he's buying in accordance his age and just takes his payment without a word.

Izuku arrives at the house half an hour early still wearing winter gloves he's sure he hasn't worn for at least two years. He opens the lighter packaging and stores it in another pocket, rolling the flint is unfamiliar but not difficult- if he's going to prove he's not a spy for UA the way he's suspecting he neds to he's going to need nothing traced to him.

He pulls both gloves off and puts them in his pocket, after removing them he rolls the lighter again and it illuminates a pocket of the night.

With almost a scrap of hesitation he holds the end of a thumb above the flame, it burns in a way it never has when he wasn't dying. It's a reflex to pull away from what's hurting and sending trickles of pain across his whole hand and making it feel a little numb, he fights the urge to flick the lighter off and call it a day.

By the third finger the urge to pull away has left, and by the fifth the pain is almost completely null as his hand grows number ever second it's under scorching flame.

It's an almost methodical process, roll the lighter and hold a finger under it until it starts to become unbearable and then flick it off and let the light quickly die out.

His fingertips sting and by the time he gets to the second hand and has to roll it with a freshly burned thumb he considers backing out but ultimately decides doing a half job is a waste. He finishes and has twenty minutes until he's meant to meet the guy who's killed him twice, and ten minutes until he actually shows up.

With tender fingertips Izuku removes the two letters and his knife from his pocket and lowers himself to the ground, it hurts to grip his knife and pry one of the loose boards of the floor up but he grits his teeth and shoves the letter marked with a small black X in the corner underneath it and lets it fall back on top of it. He wipes the blade off on his sleeve and sets to do his next course of action.

The man that kills him has a gun, and he's obviously not going to win a gun fight with a knife, so he has to find a way to get rid of it- the first thing that comes to mind is to just kill him but then he considers that the man is a good bit taller and stronger than him and he'd have to take him by surprise and kill him very quickly, the easier thing to do is to threaten to burn the fake letter.

Izuku switches his lighter for one he hasn't used yet and keeps it in the palm of his hand with the letter in the other, and then he waits.

It isn't long before he hears his voice again, he's saying the same as last time though he's a bit far away to hear it as clearly as the time before.

He enters the house and sees Izuku

"You the UA kid? You're early"

"I am"

"You got the info?"

Izuku holds the crisp white letter up and the man reaches for it, he pulls his hand back

"Take the gun out of your coat pocket and put it on the ground first, then kick it away"

"I ain't got a gun-"

Izuku rolls the lighter with protest from his sore thumb and holds it below the letter

"Take the gun out of your pocket or I will burn the information in this letter to ash"

"You're bluffing"

"You willing to find out?" he holds the flame a little closer, it's a slither away from licking at the paper and the man reaches into his pocket and points it at Izuku

"I'll just take it from your corpse"

"Except this isn't the real letter and the one that actually has the information in is hidden somewhere only I know- so shooting me means you have nothing and the one person who can tell you where you could have something is dead"

Izuku raises the flame to the letter and lets the flames eat at it greedily, he drops it to the ground where it continues to burn and illuminate the room with flickering light.

Reluctantly, he lowers his weapon

"Drop it, kick it away", with a glowering look in his eyes he does just that, it lands with a metallic clink and slides across the old wooden floor.

"Where's the real letter?"

Izuku points to the floorboard he pried up earlier and watches as the man strides over and crouches down, with his heart pumping a little Izuku silently moves closer to him

"It's under the floorboard", the man mutters something about him being a smartass but keeps on trying to pry the board up, he sees the glimpse of white and reaches for it. Izuku moves behind him and silently flicks open his knife

"This better be the real thing-"

Izuku presses the knife to his neck from behind him

"What the fuck-"

"Why does the league think I'm a spy"

"What? Because you're from UA obviosouly, you're not gonna help without a bullshit hero motive and you're not gonna hurt me cause you're too good" he sounds almost smug, Izuku presses hard enough to draw a little blood, he breathes in a little sharp

"You want to test that out?"

"You're not gonna kill me, you aint got it in you"

His overbearing confidence really makes Izuku want to just slice the knife across his neck to spite him, but he keeps his hand steady despite the protest his fingertips are giving

"It would prove I'm not a spy"

"You're bluffing, you go to that hero academy I bet there is not a chance you're gonna kill me"

Izuku almost smiles a little to himself, by himself with someone who's killed him twice he can almost justify lavishing in this, savouring the rushing feelings that happen in almost no other situation.

"You thinking that makes this so much better"

The man splutters and makes a sound akin to a gargle as he slumps to the ground with blood pouring from his neck, Izuku grabs the letter before it can be soaked and stands up straight, sparing but a glance to the dying body of a stranger.

He crouched down again and slowly took the coat off the man, he took the small device out of the mans ear and wiped it off on his sleeve before putting it into his own. He picked through the sleeve of the coat he'd seen him talk into and found a small wired microphone taped to the inside, he ripped the tape off and unthreaded the microphone from the inside of the sleeve and wrapped it around his own hand.

He pressed the small red button on the small microphone and held it in

"Kiyomori is it done?"

"Not quite, I think you should send someone else over- Kiyomori is a little dead"

He hears faint swearing from the other side

"Who killed him?"

"I did, if you want the information I'll give it to someone who won't shoot me"

He hears more swearing and the line is silent for a moment, he almost thinks they've hung up until

"Someone will be over in ten minutes" the person on the other end sounds annoyed and Izuku is a little glad

"Ok"

The line goes dead and he takes the earpiece out and drops the microphone on the floor next to Kiyomori's body- there's a rather large pool of blood surrounding him and it's splattered on his hands and clothes, he doesn't like how it feels and reminds himself to take of the jumper he's wearing and burn it before he leaves the house.

Ten minutes go by and the blood pool has stopped growing bigger and started getting a little darker- he wonders briefly what will happen, whenever he's killed someone he's always reset pretty much right after. He guesses that he's a villain and nobody is going to look much further than it just being a dispute among villains that turned fatal for one of them, nobody is going to stretch far enough that a fifteen year old attending UA did it.

Another man shows up in a shorter coat, he looks to the body and swallows a little

"You got the information?"

Izuku offers the hand that has the crisp white envelope splattered with a little blood and marked with a black X in the corner. Almost hesitantly it's taken from his hand

"The league thinks you've proved you're not a spy, no hero would endorse this and no straight laced hero kid would follow through- they'll be in contact"

And with that the other man puts the letter in his pocket and leaves, no gunshot and barely a second look at the corpse lying at Izukus feet and the bloodied knife he's still holding.

Izuku puts the knife in his pocket, strips his jumper off and lights it on fire with another roll of a lighter.

The flickering light illuminates the shining pool of blood by Izukus shoes as he watches the clothing burn and feels a weight of contentness sink into his chest and put him in a slightly better mood, not sparing a second glance to the man he killed.

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Sorry about the problems with chapter five, I had no idea it had repeated itself- I think I've fixed it now but sorry for not noticing for so long, I posted the first eight in one big chunk since I already had them out on other sites, I'll make sure I double check I haven't repeated the chapter by accident in the future x

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore. But if you don't like it why read this far?


	13. 13- Cover A Known Lie

It's late at night when Katsuki sits up in his bed after being startled awake by seemingly nothing, he checks the time- 2:06am- and shrugs the feeling off as a nightmare, he'd been having much more the past year anyways.

He lies back into bed and stares at the ceiling, a good twenty odd minutes pass staring at his off white wall charred in a few places before his brain finally stops buzzing with a low thrum of adrenaline from a nightmare he can't recall and calms down. He sinks into his bed, closes his eyes and-

For whatever reason he thinks it's 2:06am but when Katsuki sits up in his bed after being startled awake and checks the time it's 1:56am, he can feel the slight beginnings of a headache start to drill their way into his mind and a feel of dread prickles up his spine.

He stands out of his bed, getting the feeling he won't be able to go back to sleep for a while he wanders to his window and looks out of it hoping that a calm night is what will still his racing mind and allow him to get a good nights sleep.

Unfortunately for his sleeping schedule he caught a glimpse of someone hanging out of a window a couple doors down at Izukus house, as he watches Izuku drop to the ground then brush himself off and start walking he knows he won't be able to get back to sleep- he'll probably stay up staring out of the window intensely until Izuku comes back.

And so, with that in mind, Katsuki grabs a hoodie and sneaks out of his own window, following Izuku from a good few metres behind him as he walked through town to the part he'd been told to avoid for years. Izuku walks right through to some 24 shop and comes out holding nothing but a small flip phone- why would Izuku need another crappy phone? He already had one.

He continues to follow Izuku to a run down looking house which he presses himself at the side of the open door and seems to be listening in. He's too far away to hear what's being said but from the annoyed expression on Izukus face he can just about make out in the low light.

Katsuki creeps closer as quietly as he can manage as Izuku starts talking to whoever he was listening to, he's close enough to hear but missed the first half of their conversation.

"Ok" Izuku says whilst standing just in the doorway

"Ok?" The person on the inside repeats incredulously

"You're going to shoot me whatever I say so is there a point to dragging this out? Just shoot me already"

\- there's metal glimmering in the light that Katsuki recognises with a jolt, he's trying to make his legs move to push Izuku out of the way, to grab his hand and drag him far away from this- the blood is rushing so loudly in his ears he can't hear what the man says in response before there's a loud shot.

Izuku falls to the ground outside, Katsuki can do nothing but shake and scream at his muscles for not doing anything as blood coats the concrete overgrown with unkept grass below him.

-Katsuki sits up in bed thinking it's 1:56am, he glances at his phone to find it's 2:01am, his lungs are straining for air and before he can breath properly he's already out of bed and at his window- watching Izukus window and waiting for something to happen, a minute or two passes and nothing happens. It sends a further wave of dread over his whole body and he moves to his wardrobe without much thought.

He pulled a hoodie on over his sleep clothes and snuck out his own window, feet only covered in socks that got soaked the second he hit the wet grass. He pulls his hood up as far as he can and pulls the strings tight as he walks a path that's a little familiar, the night is quiet but feels oddly threatening as he treads into the part of town he's avoided since he was young- he's never walked these streets before but somehow knows exactly where he's going as he twists through unknown alleyways until he reaches an abandoned looking house, his eyes are drawn to the patch of concrete overgrown with grass by the old front door and he tries to swallow the small ball of nerves that's crept up into his throat with little success.

Katsuki walks around to one of the smashed in windows that isn't boarded up and looks inside- he can barely see anything in the low light but the smell of metal invades his senses.

He stares at the barely visible figure of Izuku for a couple minutes before he's snapped out of it a little as the front door opens, he crouches just enough so he can still see through the window.

Izuku is talking to another man for a brief moment and hands something he can't make out properly over, he can barely make out what they were saying since they talked in hushed voices

"The league thinks you've proved you're not a spy, no hero would endorse this and no straight laced hero kid would follow through- they'll be in contact"

With that the man leaves and Izuku rustles with something before there's a small light held to what seems to be an item of clothing that promptly sets itself alight. Katsuki's mind is filling with questions as to what the hell Izuku was doing in an abandoned building at 2:30am, what had he done that a hero wouldn't endorse? What league?

In the newfound flickering light the burning piece of clothing offers he can begin to make out the scene and it's an unwelcome one that tightens his lungs and flips his insides around- in the unreliable light he can make out Izuku standing not even two feet away from a corpse lying face down in a pool of it's own blood, it's creeping towards Izukus shoes as he stands and watches the fire crackle.

The tension in Izuku that seems every present begins to leak out of him, his shoulders slump a little seemingly content with the scene he was present in. There's blood splattered on one of his hands and it feels sickeningly familiar, Izuku over a dead body with blood on his hands.

Katsuki tried to block the rational part of his brain that screamed that Izuku had done this, Izuku had killed this man and was now watching a fire and relaxing next to the body- his mind raced to cover the known truth up, Izuku had been forced to do this, it had been like this before Izuku even arrived, it had been in self defence, it was a mistake that Izuku didn't mean to make.

No matter how many lies and excuses he smothered the truth in he couldn't shake the feeling that this had happened before, or the feeling that Izuku was a stranger as he stared at his relaxed back.

A couple of minutes pass and the light from the fire dies out as it goes out, plunging the night into darkness again and covering up the scene just as he was trying to do in his own mind.

Izuku left the building and Katsuki almost wanted to pull him aside and ask what happened, to get the truth and make sure that he wasn't a stranger but he didn't- maybe he knew that Izuku would lie as he did about everything else, maybe he thought that if Izuku had done that then what would he do to him for knowing? The part of him that knew Izuku had killed that man thought that he already knew the answer, the same part of him that knew most of what Izuku spoke was lies, knew that most that passed across his face was fabricated, knew that despite what he kept on telling himself about how Izuku was the same that there was something dark there that made his spine shiver sometimes when it'd show through.

Katsuki didn't talk to Izuku much the next day, his head filled with thoughts of a bloodstained floor, the stranger he'd made out to be his friend and all the lies between them. He decides he'll tell him in a couple of days, after his mind has had time to excuse and cover everything up and painted Izuku as the victim as it always does, but until then he'll completely block it out and try to ignore the knot of nerves in his chest.

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This chapter almost got thanosed after my laptop crashed but I manged to save it

If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	14. 14- Eye Of The Storm

The storm that usually rages in Izukus mind is unusually calm, it usually swirls with a sadness with life that makes him feel even more empty, every breath a constant reminder of his deepest want to simply not.

But the day that comes after he slits a mans throat and leaves him to bleed out without resetting leaves him with the calmest mind he has had in years, it's an odd sense of tranquillity he didn't achieve with Katsuki and he welcomes it- allows himself to lavish in the rush of meaning and soak it in, he feels almost worth something in a weird way and for a day he lets himself relax a little, he has no meeting with Nezu scheduled and even Katsuki is being more distant than usual giving him the space to relish in the temporary calm in the storm his actions had brought.

He hasn't touched the body but from nothing in the news he assumes it hasn't been found, it isn't like there are any fingerprints linking him to it, there is nothing threatening to stop the brief calm in the storm that's settled upon him, so he relaxes into it.

"I know"

Calm shattered

"Know what?"

"About-" he lowers his voice and looks around a little despite them being the only two people in his bedroom "- about last night"

"When did you find out" it comes out as more of a demand than a question but he can't reel his tone all the way in after the one calm sheet of glass over his mind had just been completely destroyed.

"Last night"

Well that put resetting out of question for one of the first times in a year, how was he going to stop him from talking? How had he not seen him? Katsuki had been asleep why would he wake up? How much had he heard? How much had he seen?

"I'm not going to tell anyone" he almost senses Izukus storm of thoughts, but mere words isn't going to calm the storm as it never has before

"I mean- you had your reasons right? Or it wasn't even you- so it's not really your fault and we can fix it right? They were a villain right?"

It's a jolt to go from relaxing to combing through the others frantic words to put the right response together

"They were, he wanted me to get some information and when I refused he came at me"

Hand shovelling a feel of regret into the moment that brought him so much peace is difficult, but with the way Katsuki face contorts a little it seems to work

"Have you gotten rid of the... body"

There's a weight to word that doesn't resonate with Izuku, he'd planned to just leave it there and let it be written off as some violence between villains but Katsuki probably wants to get rid of it for the peace of mind, for there to be no risk- and Izuku thinks he might have just found a way to get a grip on how the situation goes down

He shakes his head and slumps his shoulders a little as he forces nervousness into his eyes and looks down, it takes effect immediately as Katsuki taps his fingers lightly against the bed they're sitting on

"Are you going to?"

His eyes search for answers as his fingers tap, Izuku isn't sure that he's even aware he's doing it

"I don't think I could move it by myself, I'm worried about getting caught if I leave it there"

Izuku can feel his eyes over his form checking for his emotion and the emotion he's cramming into every crevice he can to convey something he doesn't feel at all, he chews on the inside of his mouth

"What if- what if I helped you move it?"

It's 2:12am and standing in front of a day old body with an empty bottle of butane and one of the lighters from the night before is not the situation Izuku thought he'd be in a day after murdering somebody but it's much better than being arrested after Katsuki let his mouth slip.

The body is covered in the liquid and outside, Katsuki is glancing between that and the lighter Izuku is just about to put to it and turn the evidence to ash

Flame licks at the body and quickly eats through clothes, sending the smell of burning hair and flesh across the air and lights the surrounding area up with a bright flame.

Izuku watches as it crackles in the night, the smell is unpleasant and has Katsuki burying his nose in the fabric of his hoodie and stepping back a bit in an attempt to not smell like it afterwards. He ignores the smell and takes in the flickering of the flame burning flesh, much less calm then last night as Katsuki adverted his eyes from the scene- Izuku couldn't understand it, the light of a flame was comforting and unwound a deep knot of nerves in his chest.

Involving Katsuki might have been the only way to keep him quiet but he can't shake the want to be alone in a moment like this and enjoy the warmth the fire brings, instead of having somebody who's so human it stings a little in comparison- someone who recoils at the scent and flinches away at what the fire means, who see's the body and couldn't understand the calm it could bring.

It's hard to shove remorse into his body when all he wants to do is relax in the flickering light and breath, and although he's pretty sure even if Katsuki noticed he'd cover it all up in his own head just as he had with the body it's better to pretend instead of letting it drop all at once- it's one thing to kill someone, it's another thing to kill somebody and have it be a rare calm in the storm.

He stares into the fire and wonders if Katsuki would ever open his eyes a little or if he'd stay in his perpetual state of knowing denial, it's easier for him but it is a little sad to see him bend his morals and mind over backwards to excuse things to stick with Izuku for whatever reason he has.

It's 2:24am before he notices that Katsuki has taken so many steps back to avoid the smell and leaves, he knows the body will take a couple of hours to burn but it's surrounded by abandoned and knocked down buildings, even if somebody does come across it he knows it'll be written off as violence between villains. No the real danger to him is Katsuki and what he saw that night, he still doesn't know exactly how much he heard- but considering he believed it was an accident he can't have seen him deliberately stand behind him to drag a knife across the others neck.

They go their separate ways at 2:57am, Katsuki assures him one more time that he won't snitch with a waver of something that Izuku can almost place as fear.

Sleep doesn't come so easy as it had the night before, this time he doesn't dream of a soft flickering light and a comforting red that sends him into a glass covered lullaby, this night he dreams of the smell of burning hair, the sound of police sirens and the look of betrayal in crimson red eyes.

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	15. 15- Glass Cage

Every time Katsuki breaths in all he can smell is overwhelming burnt flesh and hair, it surrounded him when the flames roared in his ears, fills his lungs until they can't take any more and there's no room for anything other than guilt and dread with no room for air in between.

When he gets home he's coughing as silently into his hand as he climbs into his bedroom window and instantly strips his clothes soaked in memories and dumps them into a plastic bin bag before he goes to the bathroom and desperately tries to rid himself of the feelings filling his lungs into the sink.

He ties it and throws it into his school bag, ready to dump them on the way to school the next day and then try to rid what he'd helped with off his conscious in the same way- knowing it would eat at him in the back of his mind and question every tiny move Izuku made.

Katsuki had peeled back another layer of Izukus mind and just as every other time he'd done the same it only served to tear down the fabricated humanity he'd painted over Izuku in his own mind, to try and pretend that he was still the same person as when they were children.

It was impossible to ignore the threads of darkness weaved into Izuku that shined through after what he'd witnessed, after he'd seen him staring at a burning body that smelt rancid and relaxed as if it was one of the only calming situations in the world, acting as if he were burning incense rather than a corpse .

Impossible to ignore the strikes of cold fear that coursed through his body when he'd told Izuku, the harshness to his eyes and demands thinly veiled as questions, he'd expected him to reach into a pocket for a reason he couldn't remember- but from the way his blood ran cold whenever he reached into a pocket of any sort he could only assume Izuku had done something and it was bad, no matter how hard he tried to bury that assumption under a pile of lies and excuses in his own brain cold fear didn't lie.

He could practically still feel the smell invading his lungs, weighing him down from the inside as we walks the usual track to UA as if he was in a sort of autopilot- the only fully conscious moment of the day is when he takes the bag of stinking clothes out of his bag and dumps them into a random bin when nobody is looking and feels the memories tighten his lungs and turning his organs over.

Katsuki tries to swallow it down, to dissipate the ball of nerves tensing every inch of his body with uncomfortable anticipation that only heightened when ever he caught a glance of Izuku or smelt even the slightest hint of smoke.

Adrenaline courses through him steadily and makes him want to move whenever they talk for longer than a short exchange of pleasantries, every response is auto and he feels like he's watching the two of them talk from outside of a one sided glass, like it isn't his mouth saying those words, like it isn't his hands touching Izukus shoulder and assuring him it'd be alright and that he'd fix it- from outside of the glass he can think 'fix you' in private, but as most everything else it only makes his head overflow with more questions.

For two days his head feels submersed in water, almost like everything is a long dream he can't wake up from. His limbs sag and eyes droop with the effort of living and for those two days it feels like he isn't- somewhere in the conscious part of his mind outside of the glass he wonders if this is how Izuku feels.

He's suffocating on air that tastes like burnt and smoke and as the days go by he feels less and less like he's the one on the outside of the glass but more on the inside, just watching helplessly as his body goes through the auto movements, responds to everything just as usual and sees nobody but Izuku notice that anything is off.

All his mind is filled with is replays of those two nights, how when the body was moved he could just about make out the wound on his neck before Izuku lit him on fire, how it had been a deliberate slash most of the way across so deep he could see the inner workings of his throat.

The smell of stale blood, the light shade of blue the mans whole freezing body had gone, his eyes that had still been open but held nothing in them- it was all like a vivid picture that had been burned into his mind

Sometimes Katsuki thinks that Izuku might actually be dead, in the private dark depths of his mind he thinks that maybe he is completely crazy and that Izuku did die after he'd pushed him so far and told him to, thinks that maybe remembering flashes of the other boys death is his minds way of breaking through the protective shell about it he'd built around himself to tell him the truth in the blanket of lies he'd let himself drift off under.

He thinks that and wonders, but then Izuku will do something the one he'd painted in his own mind could never do and thinks that maybe this is worse- maybe watching Izuku twist and warp into a stranger is worse than him being in the ground, he thinks that maybe if he was in the ground at least he would have something physical to mourn but for all of what made Izuku himself had departed nobody else seemed to notice.

Nobody else seems to notice the dullness to his eyes, the tightness to his smile, the way the emotion in his tone doesn't quite pull through the way it does for everybody else- the way he seems to be missing something that everyone else had that made him seem almost inhuman.

With the way he twists the things around him, kills a man and has Katsuki jumping to be useful and help him cover it up going against every moral fibre in his body, Izuku feels like somebody he barely knows despite spending hours with him every day for a year.

Everything about Izuku felt too perfect, too well said, too rehearsed, too much like it had happened before- everything but those tiny moments of imperfection where he could drop his shoulders and relax that he'd intruded on.

Katsuki could feel it in the deepest parts of himself that something was off with Izuku, something that he knew he couldn't just sweep under a mental rug like he did with every other odd thing Izuku had done over the past year, every tiny slip up that made his lungs clench, heart beat and mind overflow.

It was a gut feeling that twisted his organs around each other and threaded strings of nerves into every part of him as he stood in his glass cage he couldn't escape from, head foggy with the effort of existing and wondering if he was ever going to get out, if he was ever going to do anything about Izuku whoever he had become or if he was just going to be there to bury a body whenever it was needed and left to pick apart the actions by himself as Izuku went around his days as nothing had happened at all- until he'd told him that he knew he'd even seemed more relaxed which only made him force more suspicions down and forcefully tell himself over and over again that Izuku is a good person, Izuku is his friend

It's a Wednesday afternoon when Katsuki feels like he can finally breath again and he's glad he's in the privacy of the schools bathroom when he's gulping for air like a fish who's just been pulled out of a river, every movement he's hyper aware of happening- every single breath is heavy and strained like it takes all the effort in the world.

When he's finally gotten a grip on how to breath again Izuku walks into the room with the usual tired expression and dark eyes that don't change a single bit when he lays eyes on Katsuki

"Come on, lunch is going to end soon"

The words aren't kind, they feel more like a parent scolding their child but Katsuki forces a small smile and nods

"Lets go"

Izuku has turned around without a care at all before Katsuki can even finish his words, the smile on his face falters and as he jogs a little to catch up on aching legs with lungs that can barely work he repeats a single thought in his head like a mantra to block all the other ones out-

Izuku is a good person, Izuku is a good person, Izuku is a good person-

-He catches a glimpse of Izukus dull eyes and smells a hint of metal in the air around him-

Izuku is not a good person, and it's a thought he can't ignore and block out with pointless mantras anymore

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore


	16. 16- A Test Of Patience

Izuku was many things, but patient with a near catatonic state Katsuki for two and a half long days after watching one corpse burn was not one of them.

It started out convenient, he could give as little attention to Katsuki as he wanted as he'd respond on complete auto. He'd reset a whole eight times in the first day and Katsuki hadn't noticed a thing, and if he had he'd been too wrapped up with himself to say anything about it or interrupt his plans like usual- for once he'd had a little excitement during resets but eventually the adrenaline of stealing tiny things from shops and skipping school only to reset and do something different had worn of quickly and by the seventh reset tiring out a lot of the options with no Katsuki to come and make things a little intresting or stop him it was just another thing to do to pass time that got old as everything else, he wasn't quite in the mood or had the reasons to justify it to himself to do something bigger that would be a bit of a difference but he supposed it was best to leave that to be an occasion as to not tire it out like most other things.

The second day it had begun to grate on his nerves a little, he'd been so glassy eyed and robotic and with no difference in activity it was boring to drag a catatonic Katsuki around their usual routine with a painfully obviously fake 'it'll be alright, I'll fix it' with a hand on his shoulder- it made him want to laugh bitterly at it, Katsuki _was_ the problem and one he could only hope to control, if he'd never remembered anything then he'd be free to go and do whatever he wanted and reset as many times as he wanted with nobody remembering anything. Izuku hated leaving things in the hands of fate, it was so unpredictable and uncontrollable he couldn't plan for whatever was going to be thrown at him next, all he could do is hope it wouldn't be enough to ruin his current plans- it initiated another thing he hated doing, hoping.

Hoping was an 'if only' thought by everybody who couldn't stand up and get it themselves, he could spend his life moping about an 'if only' when he'd been run over and killed when he was six and found out he had a quirk and his life had been perfect- hoping without action was for dreamers, and Izuku certainly was not a dreamer from all the things he'd done for even a chance to get any closer to his own goal.

Izuku had even snapped once or twice at Katsuki that was not followed by the usual brief fear that prevailed, logically his reaction should be stronger now since he knew what Izuku was capable of but he barely even flinched. It gets annoying dragging dead weight around the whole day and he keeps reminding himself that this is what it takes for Katsuki to not be able to talk, this is what he has to endure.

Day three rolls around and when Izuku see's his eyes glassy when they meet outside his house he can tell at what kind of long day it's going to be and mentally groans a little but greets him just the same as every other day.

When they're walking Katsuki says about 'fixing it' again, it grates on his nerves further that Katsuki thinks he's helping in this situation. He keeps his thoughts to himself, it's something that shouldn't be said out loud- for Katsuki because he won't be able to take it and for Izuku because dealing with another one of his breakdowns is an excruciatingly boring waste of his time.

A breakdown was a showing sign of the cracks beginning to expand within him and it was the last thing he needed, sure he'd wondered how much he could push Katsuki but it had been a fun little 'what if' he toyed with in his head when he was bored- it was a bit more relaxing to watch someone die than watch someone break and unless he broke in the perfectly mouldable way he'd have a much harder time predicting what he was going to do and being able to warp that in the little ways that mattered, if he couldn't do that what good was he? It'd just be another chore that ate away at his time with no foreseeable purpose much like the meeting with Nezu he was currently in.

The meetings happen during his lunch period, they last around ten minutes and it's more of a quick check-up than any in depth conversation which he is thankful for, talking to Nezu in his already annoyed state makes him need to reset more after a slip of the mouth.

It's been two resets and as usual the principle seems off, his beady eyes are twinkling in a way that cannot mean good for him. Nezu stirs tea and the clinking against the cup really doesn't help for his ever shortening patience

"A student approached me about your quirkless status yesterday- he's in your class, Shinsou Hitoshi"

He had always been weird around him after a couple resets, maybe it was tied to the nature of his quirk that made him more resistant to whatever kind of brain washing memory erasure of his own. Another possible problem tossed onto the pile was not welcome at all.

"Did he disagree with my presence at a hero academy?"

Nobody had said anything, but he guessed that if he broadcasted his quirkless status that would change

"No, he was just asking about what your quirk was and seemed surprised when I told him you were quirkless"

"I don't broadcast my status to many, I've had... unpleasant experiences"

Playing the bullying card was a little lower than he liked to pull but it was enough for the principle to nod and drop the subject not wanting to bring up any unwanted memories

"I just thought I'd make you aware, maybe it's best to talk to him and find his opinion to make sure it isn't hostile- students can get defensive when staff ask"

Izuku nodded and added it to the short list of things to do, he'd seen the boy in question throw him a couple looks during class after a reset and holding his head a little, it wasn't ideal to have to approach him and make himself known but the other option would be having to lie about not wanting to approach him for some meek reason that made pity shine in other peoples eyes.

He's dismissed with the usual exchange of pleasant goodbyes and he heads for the lunch room, eyes looking for Katsukis and when they come up with nothing he walks to the bathroom he went into as they were walking to the office together.

When he opens the door he finds Katsuki by the sinks breathing as if he doesn't know how and eyes once again filled with life

"Come on, lunch is going to end soon"

He tries to weasel a kindness into his words but the annoyance of having to deal with it wins it over and it sounds much less friendly than he wanted it to.

Katsuki doesn't respond verbally as he usually does, instead he pulls on a tight smile and nods

"Lets go"

Izuku knows he should at least pretend to be a good friend and offer him a hand or a chance to lead but the annoyance has taken over again and he's turned around and started walking with apathy seeping out of every pore.

Katsuki jogs to catch up to him and gives him an odd look before turning his attention to the ground with a straining smile

"You don't need to walk me every time, it makes you miss lunch"

It's the small insignificant acts that Izuku can't really wrap his head around, it's an action that wouldn't matter if he stopped doing and gives him nothing but negatives in return yet he continues to walk him to that office and wait outside, and every time he does he's missed half of lunch and what he did have has gone uncomfortably cold.

A thought of the difference between him and Katsuki has once again had a bright red ring drawn around it, and as he has before he thinks about it as Katsuki mutters something about friendship

Izuku does think that part of him died when he stepped from that roof and then did the same thirty times over with no success, not the part he wanted to die or even the part that the current him considered important. He thinks that when he found he couldn't die he lost more than a way out but what made him properly alive in the first place.

He knows he lost a part of himself that day, a part that left a gaping void in himself that ravened his mind and could only be calmed by corpses and the sight of a burning jumper, the only time it let him feel whole.

Katsuki is stumbling over himself like a new-born deer and he thinks that maybe this is a little more annoying, the aftermath of what he did and had to do to keep it covered is long and tests his patience more than a little.

He makes a note to himself to always look behind him when he's going to do something that somebodies knowledge of makes him have to sit through this just to cover himself.

Izuku goes home and finds comfort in three things, the handgun he picked up five days ago, one burner phone of many and the rolling warmth of his lighter when he rolls it with a thumb that just barely aches

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If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore

Quick update: I completely forgot to update on here but I'm taking a couple days off, just some personal stuff I'm working through that got in the way of writing a bit- but I definitely will continue this fic and hopefully pretty soon. Sorry I forgot to say on here and left the usual update hanging, I'll double check I've updated everywhere before I post if I need to again x


	17. 17- Merciless Pursuit

Filling what has been missing for so long, even if it is for but a second, is a dangerous act- it creates a longing that did not exist before, the absence of something is easier to accept when you have not been exposed to a solution that perfectly fits into that aching void.

Longing to fill an absence after a taste can quickly run out of control if not kept in line, Izuku knows this and he is sure in himself that he is fully in control and that one tiny taste of existence won't overtake him, it won't blur his vision for his goal.

Izuku longs for few things, death being at the top of his list and to be left alone is scoring fairly close. Pointless exercises in normality, in the completely mundane everyday that he is dead set on escaping from would always be the first thing that came to mind if anyone were to ever ask what he longed for, but it was a thought he would have to keep to himself to not be sent to therapy or seen as unnatural.

Everything in the universe exists, as is their nature most of those things savour their time and fear the empty beyond and in that sense Izuku is against nature itself, and in a further way defying death was defying existence itself- everything lived and then everything came to an end, it was the cycle for every thing in the universe as small as an ant or as large as a star, eventually everything died except for Izuku.

Considering all of that Izuku can barely consider himself existing anymore, nonexistence is a cold emptiness that aches in an odd twisting way and can only be filled in the most inhumane of ways.

He wonders if being immortal means he's 'alive' at all or just trapped in the empty in-between like the blank screen he's staring at after waking up post death perfectly conveys, he sits in the void and it doesn't feel so much like a taunt anymore that makes him want to tear it down, it's cold and empty but it almost feels fitting for him.

There are few things he's found that fill the gaping void in himself, killing a man, burning a body and to a much lesser extent holding the handgun he took.

It's heavier than he thought it'd be, it's seemingly always cold to the touch, a little hard to hold and it occupies a small space in his mind wherever he goes, not the object itself but what it could do- what he could do with it.

It gave him the slightest pleasurable chill down his spine, though nothing compared to the real thing it took the sharp edge off life for a couple minutes.

He's in the middle of one of these thoughts when Katsuki interrupts, he looks a little shaken and Izuku can only hope he isn't in the same state as last week- for once fate seemed to be on his side as all his actions seem jarring and human unlike the smooth auto pilot ones of the week before.

Mentally counting the days, a little muddles among the resets, he finds it's the day of the USJ trip and Katsuki being more shaken than usual probably means the information he passed on did something- though he'd never cared to ask what

"How did your trip go"

As most other questions directed at Katsuki it leaves little room to be avoided

"You haven't heard? Villains attacked USJ"

His voice sounds a little hollow, a little shaky but Izuku supposes that's growing more and more common as the resets pass

"What did they do?"

"Came in through some portal, they beat the life out of Aizawa and I think- I think they were trying to kill all might? I got transported away part way through"

Kill All Might? They must have some powerful quirks to even start to think of being able to do that- he'd agreed to help with his sole goal in mind without a real care for their cause, now he was thinking about it was it even possible to kill All Might with his quirk? He did have that scar he'd been shown one painful reset...

"Did they?"

"Did they kill All Might? Of course not he's All Might"

"Of course"

Obviously they'd failed, why had he even considered investing care in their cause for a second? Wanting to kill All Might was no new idea by a long shot and everyone who'd ever try had evidently failed, he didn't care himself if the hero icon lived or died so any consideration about investing care in the leagues motives was discarded- he associated with them for one thing and only one thing, to get rid of his quirk.

Sometimes Izuku had to remind himself that he wasn't a cruel person, that he simply doing what had to be done- ruthless was the word for it, it sounded violent and harsh but ruthlessness was not cruel. Ruthlessness was seeing a goal and then seeing the quickest way to get to that goal, he could wait years and develop quirk science so far that he could remove his own quirk without harming anybody but the prospect of waiting years had him turning to the much faster option, supplying villains with what they wanted and then getting his quirk removed.

It was quick, it was much simpler than any alternative he wracked his brain for.

He was comfortable in the fact that he did what had to be done, he stole the information that led to a teacher being gravely injured because he had to, he killed a man because there was no other way to both hand the information over and prove he wasn't some sort of UA spy, involving Katsuki and then him breaking down had to be done so he wouldn't be able to turn him in- the only thing worse than living his life out and never being able to die was that but in prison

The line between ruthlessness and cruelty is thin, often blurred and hard to distinguish but Izuku knows everything he's done was necessary, the road to a goal wasn't always clean and he was perfectly comfortable with that.

Being told to come to a location and upon arrival then being told to kill an innocent man to definitively prove he wasn't a spy was one of these necessary things. He was handed a gun and given one minute to do what he had to, if he refused he'd be deemed a spy at worst or uncommitted at best and probably be allowed to live- but Izuku did not want to be let go to live, his goal was death and whatever he did to achieve that was necessary not cruel

A gunshot is loud, it echoes around the small walls and makes his ears ring, it recoils and makes his wrist down tingle with the dull ache of whiplash.

The only sound in the room after the deafening shot is the gargle of blood, he'd been aiming for the mans head but it seemed he'd actually tore a hole in the right side of his neck, he looked down to the weapon still in his hand- he was getting used to the weighty feeling of it and after the shot it didn't seem so cold anymore, warm like a low set radiator in an almost comforting way.

Izuku looked to the scene he'd caused and again reassured himself that this was necessary, he was allowed to relax as death rolled over the person he'd shot, he was allowed to relish in the comfort of a warm gun and he was not cruel for doing so.

He didn't know why he kept on reassuring himself, but for whatever reason it made relaxing in the scene before him a little easier so he kept it up.

It's not the first time whilst looking at a corpse he thinks that maybe, just maybe this is what it feels like to exist, maybe this is how it feels for that aching abyss in himself to be filled.

The gun goes off loudly as it had before, it's much more obnoxious than his small knife and it feels different- the phantom ache in his skull when he resets is different, more widespread and a lot harsher than a tiny blade that usually leaves a thin and prominently dull throb, this is across half of his head and it feels like the aching that would come after being hit over the head with a baseball bat.

A simple curiosity satiated in a way that was certain to ache for the next hour or two, wondering how it felt to get shot in the head was a morbid curiosity but as he usually did with most others of its kind he fulfilled it.

Izuku decides he likes knives better than guns- cleaner, quieter and more personal than the blind deafening violence of a gun.

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Sorry this was later than usual by a couple days, I think I'm going to slow my update pace down a bit to a chapter every 4-5 days. I've mostly worked through what put my writing on hold for a bit and hopefully it won't crop up again, and if it does I hope I can work through it a bit faster to carry on doing what I love

As sadly seems to be required I shall reiterate that if this fic isn't for you feel free to review, the only thing I ask is that it is constructive because meaningless hate will be ignored


	18. 18- Perpetual Boredom

The weeks between the incident at USJ and the infamous annual UA sports festival passed quicker than the dragging days interrupted and drawn out further by sporadic resets that Izuku had become accustomed to.

The only thing he would consider of important within those unusually short weeks was his brief confrontation with Shinsou if he could call it that, after Nedzu actively advised him to talk to the other student not doing anything would mean blowing up to bigger than it was. The talk had been quick and Izuku was glad that the other boy must have had some moral objection to using his quirk wherever he'd like or it would have been much more troublesome with a string of resets to accompany it, luckily for him the conversation had been short and swift being not much more than coincidence and Shinsou just being curious- either that or he was reluctant to be direct when the principle was involved.

Katsuki had become more withdrawn than usual due to the increase in training for the sports festival, as most people had expected UA still went forward with the sports festival even if one of the presenting teachers was barely out of critical condition by the time they announced it would go on as usual.

It was both a blessing and a curse, pleasant in the sense that even if he had little to fill the time slots between the next events in his schedule he'd rather do a mildly enjoyable time consuming activity over the annoyance of keeping maintenance on a front. But like most all good things that happened to him it came with the consequence of potentially distancing them, something Izuku could not afford to let happen especially since he didn't know how much Katsuki had heard that night and if it turned out to be 'too much' he'd need to be close enough to make him believe the lie he prepared. It was that or take care of him- permanently.

On a separate calendar left open on his desk the first date of the sports festival was marked in aggressively yellow highlighter, it was accompanied by the presence of a small shopping list no longer than his hand with 'notebook', ' calendar' and 'pens' all crossed off and only 'voice recorder' and 'spare burner' that had yet to be stroke through with pen.

The task assigned to him for the sports festival wasn't massive, it required him to only observe the students and detail about their quirks and anything else he could gather, after suffering defeat at USJ whoever was on the other end of the crappy burner phone speaker couldn't afford to do anything else with the current state of the league and was left to wait- sounding more like a child who had just been denied access to their favourite toy instead of the leader of a large group of villains.

In a black paperback notebook labelled simply with 'UA' in block sharpie on a stick on label Izuku continued to prepare double spread pages labelled from 1 to 39 for both 1-A and 1-B's students, in an ideal world he'd have full profiles for every student and teacher but without access to the UA database the sports festival was his best bet at getting some useful information down.

He continues writing on the nearly full double page about Katsuki, having already detailed what he knew about his quirk including it's strengths and weaknesses he'd moved on to the more personal section which earned another double page, it was a section missing from most profiles since he'd rather not get up close and personal with more students than he could get away with.

Had it been a notebook for his eyes only he'd probably have added another two pages for how much he knew about Izukus quirk and how it interacted with him, but this was surely something that a good number of villains would see and he'd get to give anything about his quirk away- except for the occasional bit of information he'd picked up from previous resets but that wasn't nearly enough to figure out exactly what his quirk was and how he activated it. A quirk that could reset time must be highly desired among people with such a high risk job and he'd rather keep his best card close to his chest, he was working with villains and they'd already tried to have him shot it'd be better to have the advantage of surprise if they did decide to turn on him.

Annoyingly there was no way to tell if they were going to follow through or just string him along doing favours only for them to drop him when they got what they wanted and the most he could do to try and ensure they wouldn't just use him was to find something about them that they would not want to fall into the hands of heroes, he could only think of a few secrets the league could have since they broadcasted their existence and their leaders name to the world through the attack on USJ- Izuku had shambled together the beginnings of a plan but there were a fair few uncertainties he's sure will result in more resets than he'd like in order to fully flesh it out.

From it's position on the table his phone gives off a single sharp sound and breaks him from his thoughts, at some point in thinking about the league he's tangled himself in he stopped jotting down notes on Katsuki, he puts the notebook on his desk after closing it and makes a mental note to continue his notes on the blonde boy at one of the many monotonous points in his everyday life

'_Speak of the devil'_

Izuku thinks to himself as he reads the message just sent to him by aforementioned blonde boy on his just barely cracked phone screen

The message he types back is short and a little blunt and after clicking the device off and shoving it into the pocket of his uniform he still hasn't taken off he moves to the wardrobe, pulling on a plain green hoodie and making no effort to read the response Katsuki has surely sent him by now.

Leaving the house is always somewhat a chore and it often left Izuku wishing he'd stayed inside scrawling hero analysis that might end up being useful to the league one day. No matter how annoying he found it he knew it was just as necessary to maintain his relationship with the one person who had the potential to ruin everything he was working towards, probably more necessary than anything else he'd done though far less enjoyable.

Izuku gives a final glance to his bedroom before he closes the front door behind him and walks the familiar path towards the small park barely a mile south, mind running amok with thoughts of all the things that lay hidden in the drawer under his bedside desk.

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Sorry that this took so long to come out, I took a break and it took longer than I'd like to get back into writing but I'm in a better place mentally, hopefully I can carry on writing and posting semi-regularly.

If anyone has any ideas of what to do next I'd love to hear some suggestions x


	19. 19- Newtons Third Law

When he was younger Izuku had asked his mother every single year if he could go and see the UA sports festival, and every year the tickets would sell out far before he got home from school or his mother home from work, it usually ended in having Katsudon for dinner to make it up to him. Now that he was here in person he could safely say it wasn't all that exciting, the seats were crammed too far together and put him a lot closer to the surrounding hero worshippers than he'd have liked.  
On top of that the heat and noise of the festival had him taking a break from the student section of the stands as often as he could manage just to get some much needed alone time in an empty bathroom, letting the thumping of blood in his ears calm down a little and hoping to himself that he didn't have to reset today to live through it again as he splashed tap water on his face to cool down faster.

Only one thing made him crack the slightest bit of a smile that day and that was the uproar from the crowd when Katsuki gave his opening speech, why he was trusted with such an important role Izuku would never know, consisting of him bluntly declaring that he intended to win and nothing more. It was an almost nice change from the usual speech given every year, all of them sounded like one was copying just enough from the other to not get caught by the people who likely screened whatever they came up with in preparation. The rest of the day was, unfortunately for him, a lot less fun in the overly warm and crowded stadium that smelt a little like crappy fair food, this was courtesy of some vendor a few rows below him who Izuku would assume was enjoying many sales since it lasted the whole time, that or he badly needed to replace whatever extraction fan he was using.

The first section of the sports festival was the one Izuku spent flipping through the scarce messages with the league to give himself an unneeded refresher on what his purpose was that day, since it involved a lot of students and no real close ups of them or their quirks it was mostly useless to him save for a few displays of power from Todoroki and Katsuki but even those would have been gathered from the upcoming stages.  
Whilst most people in the kind of hard and packed together seats were fully invested in the race shown on large screens in front of them, the yells of their cheering for whichever student they were most invested in grating more on his nerves with every passing moment, Izuku thought that the end of the race couldn't come sooner- he already knew who was going to win down to two students and it was no surprise that Katsuki came out second of the three part race with Todoroki on top.

When President Mic announces the second part of the race it results in both a sigh of 'finally' and a small wince after pain erupted in his ears, and for the fourth time that day he wished that the student seats with one of the best views wasn't so close to the announcement speaker.  
Izuku opened his spare notebook and held his pen ready in hand, prepared to write down anything and everything that came to mind when he watched and trying not to think about the task of sorting every note into sections and re-writing them later in his more professional looking book.  
At first they just announced how the point system worked and that only the top four scoring teams would move on to the final stage, expected yet the crowd gives a loud response as always, again Izuku is reminded of how much he dislikes massive crowds- why had he wanted to go when he was younger again? This was really turning out to be a chore, one that was far longer than he'd like. It'd have been much easier just to comb through the recordings but being in person gave him a better angle, annoyingly students were given the day off and expected to go anyways so he'd have had to come and endure it either way to maintain his 'good student' image.

When the second section finally starts up he's leaning forward in the hard chair and taking any note that pops into his mind no matter how useless it might be, he needed to get everything down and worry about sorting through the scribbles later that night.  
The cavalry battle was much more interesting and provokes significantly more thought than the obstacle race, it lasts every second of a full fifteen minutes with team Todoroki keeping the 10 million point headband the majority of those seconds and, when the whistle sounded for time up, winning by a landslide. By the end of it his hand muscles ache, not surprising since he's filled up six full pages with notes about the students- even the ones he had the remotest amount of interest in are in the messy block of black writing somewhere.

As he did in the time space between the two previous events he shimmies his way past seated students debating who they think is going to win the festival and speed walks to the bathroom, building ball of aggravated tension seeping out of him with every step he puts between himself and the festival.  
The temporary bathrooms set up for the sports festival will likely be every bit as loud and stressful as the festival itself, knowing this Izuku he opts to take the walk back inside the school, the halls are completely void and it's an oddly peaceful walk as his heel-and-toeing slows to a stroll. It takes longer than before to arrive at the bathroom closest to the entrance, he knows they leave a good half hour between events for students to recover and to allow time to set up the next stage but he reminds himself to walk back quicker to make sure he can recover his seat.  
It's a background thought as he places his notebook on the windowsill, putting the plug in and running a tap that squeaks just a little in protest, promptly splashing a handful of cold water on his face as the tap continues to run meekly.  
Izuku rubs his eyes and dries his face off on the back of his uniform sleeve, lethargically looking up to his reflection in the mirror with a long crack running up from the left bottom to the middle, spidering out in tens of smaller cracks that distort the image of him looking at himself.  
It's not something he does often and it almost doesn't feel real, it feels like he could peel back the skin on his face and there would be another one under, it feels like he's wearing a hyper realistic mask stapled to his face. Looking at his own dark green eyes with eye bags darker than his hair hanging under them like weights it feels like he's looking at a stranger. Were those slightly sunken cheeks really his? It certainly didn't feel like it.

Water splashes onto the floor and he's jolted out of such useless thoughts, he silently curses himself for zoning out and turns the tap off before it can completely soak part of his uniform through. He pulls the plug on the sink and watches for a couple seconds as the water begins to swirl down the drain, gaze lingering as the water disappears and leaves him with nothing but the sound of his own rhythmic breathing.  
Izuku snaps himself out of his thoughts before he can get caught up in them again, he only had fifteen minutes to get back and prepared for the next stage he didn't have the time to waste it staring at himself or an empty sink, he needs to get his notebook and speed walk back and get to his seat.  
He grabs his notebook from its place away from any spilled water and leaves the bathroom, walking slower than he said he would to selfishly revel in the brief calm of the world he so rarely got to experience without it being skull numbingly boring.

By the time he gets back it's only five minutes until the third event starts and a small clump of students have invaded his previous seat, he can barely find a seat that has a good enough view and isn't completely surrounding by students who'd nose into what he was doing before President Mic announces the final part of the festival, these seats are even closer to the speakers and warrant a harder wince than the previous two announcements.  
'Every action has a reaction' he thought to himself almost a little bitterly before he clicked his pen and hovers it above the paper in anticipation to write down anything that came across his mind.

The third part of the festival is probably his favourite- though it really isn't saying much looking at its competition- , in a sense it was cathartic to see people lay a few hits on Katsuki and when he eventually won the whole festival after Todoroki refused to use his left side the crowd wasn't exactly cheering like the years prior- usually when the sports festival ended many pro heroes who attended made a note of people with potential and the crowd often devolved into cheering no matter which individual student people were rooting for, however this year the crowd was more than a little apprehensive seeing Katsuki be crowned winner whilst he objected the position violently saying that Todoroki hadn't taken him seriously. Izuku had the feeling this would only serve to detour pros from offering him anything but it was mildly amusing nonetheless and briefly distracted from how uncomfortable the seats were.  
The moment whatever enjoyment he found from the situation had ran out he stood up from his seat and walked out of the stadium, though he'd much rather head to a quiet bathroom and unwind he'd previously agreed to meet Katsuki in one of the waiting rooms meant for competing students when they had to wait between events. He got there quickly, notebook tucked tightly under his arm and pen behind his ear and tangled up in some of his hair.  
Izuku put his notebook on a pulled out chair and rubbed his writing hand a little, taking fourteen pages of notes had done a number on it, a relatively painful number at that.  
After three minutes that seem to crawl by agonisingly slow Izuku leaves the room, quickly finding the bathroom and reminding himself to be quick as he ran the hot tap and put his writing hand under it, rubbing it a little as the water warmed.  
After a quick moment of heat aided massaging the tension in his muscled lessened and her turned the tap off, thankfully not interrupted by intruding thoughts this time around.  
He shakes his hands dry and then wipes any remaining moisture off on the legs of his trousers, coming back to the door of the second waiting room a few moments after leaving the bathroom.  
Izuku pauses before he opens the door and readies himself if Katsuki has arrived in his short absence, shoving as much emotion as he can muster after such a tiresome day into his expression as he opens the door and sure enough there stands Katsuki, he's got his back turned to him and seems to be invested in something.  
"Congratulations on the win" even Izuku can hear how flat its delivery is but Katsuki barely seems to hear him as he closes something and turns to face him with a face that certainly doesn't look happy despite his very recent win

Katsuki holds up an off-white notebook, nothing fancy and not even labelled but Izuku immediately knew what it was - had he really been careless enough to let Katsuki snooped through his stuff? After spending the whole day being doubly careful so he didn't have to reset and re-live it was something he kicked himself over even harder than he usually would have, it must have happened when he left for the bathroom.  
If that was the case Katsuki must have been suspicious of him beforehand, Izuku mentally slapped himself over not keeping it in his view at all times and made a mental note to take any and all important or personal things with him everywhere, or to hide it really damn well whenever the blonde was around.  
"Izuku are you… are you with the league of villains?"  
His two options were very quickly narrowed down to reset and live through the dragging day another time or lie through his teeth to try and explain this one away, Izuku did not like the sound of either options and that reoccurring thought of 'just kill him', although shot down quickly as always, popped up for a brief moment.

In retrospect Izuku should have guessed this would happen, expected it even- expected that a week of relaxation would be met with something like this, expected that it had to be met with this- after all, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Though knowing it was just logic, not just the world hating him, didn't make the words that had just tumbled out of Katsukis mouth with all the grace of an untrained ballerina any sweeter in the slightest- if anything it made them worse, now he could kick himself over not expecting it for however this glaring problem tangled up in all the things he couldn't just die and fix lasted.

'Note to self-' Izuku thought to himself for the second time in a minute as his mind raced to shamble together some lie, some excuse, some explanation from the thin air around him '-Always remember Newton's Third Law'.


End file.
